This Bureaucracy Is Killing Me!
Coworkers, Hospital, Jerk, Rotterdam, The Netherlands | Healthy | October 13, 2018
(I am working the night shift in a student team. One of our tasks is getting blood and stuff for the operating surgeons all around the hospital. This night a sixteen-year-old boy on a scooter has been hit by a car and is haemorrhaging profusely. I am called to get blood for the blood transfusion that needs to be done. However, due to the fact the boy is being reanimated while receiving a blood transfusion and an operation, there is no time to fill in a form. This is the conversation I have with the man at the blood lab
Me: “Hey, I don’t have a form, but I need blood for the sixteen-year-old patient that’s bleeding out downstairs.”
Blood Lab: “If you don’t have the form, you don’t get the blood.”
Me: “But they don’t have the time to fill in a form, as they are operating on him while giving a blood transfusion, and he was just reanimated.”
Blood Lab: “But you don’t have a form.”
Me: “Yes, I know, but the boy is dying.”
Blood Lab: “Well, it’s not my fault if he dies; come back when you have the form.”
(Sir, I know that you were technically right, but is a form more important than the life of a sixteen-year-old boy?!)