How do you feel about this?

Published

i know how i feel about it:

oklahoma city hospital offers treat as a reward

health

buzz up!

by susan simpson

published: october 10, 2009

cookie monster would feel right at home at community hospital in southwest oklahoma city.

that’s because patients are offered fresh-baked treats each evening, as the smell of chocolate chip cookies wafts through the halls.

:icon_roll

Specializes in Pediatrics.

I think it's great that hospitals have started making food more palatable and giving patients more choices as far as meals go. The hospital that I'm doing clinicals at this semester has a food service that offers a menu and pts can call and order what they would like off the menu, within the confines of their prescribed diets, which I think is a good thing. It gives them some sense of control when they can't control much else while hospitalized. However, cookies in the evening??

As much as I think it is important for pts to feel as comfortable as possible in the hospital, and little things do matter, I see this as more disastrous than helpful. For one, I think of my pts who have been on prescribed thickened liquid diets, or other prescribed diets/NPO who would have to endure the torture of not being allowed to partake in this nightly ritual. Not to mention, some medications make pts so nauseous, especially with strong odors, that this could literally make them sicker. Yuck!

And last but not least, I am not working my tail off in nursing school so that I can learn to bake cookies and serve them!! I can't believe this job is falling to the nurses, who are already busy with actual patient care. I don't see this lasting very long because I can't imagine the nurses would put up with it for any length of time. At least I hope not!:twocents:

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Tele, Critical Care.

Ok, aside from the fact that it's totally crazy to think nurses would have time to bake cookies... isn't that really gross? Just think about how many germs are all over us even when we wash our hands over and over... and they want them to handle people's food? That's disgusting!

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Specializes in being a Credible Source.

In a country with an obesity epidemic, is it really good policy to be handing out cookies to people laying in bed all day?

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I will say that I had an apt at an imaging facility....and they had a basket of Otis in the waitinng room-nice touch, especially since they wer running behind...

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This is revolting. I am absolutely disgusted. We are unappreciated as it is, expected to function according to virtue script, doing the jobs of other departments as well as our own, doing dangerously heavy and fast-paced med passes, and the first to feel the ax when budgets get tight...

...we are being laid off and eliminated from every employer in every state, those of us who are left on the job are told to do more with less OR ELSE...

... and now we're baking cookies.

And as a previous poster observed, that means that some stupid nurses agreed to do this.

Cookies?? Where does it end? The moron nurses at this Oklahoma facility should have thrown the cookie ovens right in their administrator's and DON's faces, and then chewed them out verbally in no uncertain terms. But, they didn't, just as the powers that be knew they wouldn't, because...

... they are nurses, and they won't do that kind of thing.

It's our own fault. We don't stand up on our hind legs and defend ourselves when it matters the most, boys and girls. We bring it on ourselves.

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Specializes in Emergency & Trauma/Adult ICU.

Here's the video, folks ... from the hospital's website.

http://communityhospitalokc.com/

Wait for the features in the middle of the screen to scroll to the cookie video.

That's one hospital from which I would never seek care ... let alone seek employment.

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Specializes in Clinical Research, Outpt Women's Health.

I bet the nauseus patients really appreciate this!

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, ED.
Here's the video, folks ... from the hospital's website.

http://communityhospitalokc.com/

Wait for the features in the middle of the screen to scroll to the cookie video.

That's one hospital from which I would never seek care ... let alone seek employment.

Someone needs a :trout:

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I spent the majority of my adult life working in the hotel/restaurant industry. Surprisingly enough we were never expected to provide medical care for our customers (beyond the obligatory Heimlich maneuver and BLS stuff, of course).

Here's what we *did* get as employees: free meals, 1-hour PAID lunch breaks, free health/dental/vision/life insurance, sometimes free uniforms.

I make about 30% more $ per year now as a nurse, and I think I get more vacation as well (PTO now vs. set # of vacation days then, haven't worked out the difference). Plus, my full-time work week is over after 3 days vs. 5 previously. Yeah, and now I get to call myself a professional and all that jazz.

...that is to say, if you want to see this boy slinging hash again now, there better be a tip jar on my tray...

My goal now is to find a job that combines the pay of an RN with the perks of working for a blatantly "for profit" company that knows how to "spread the wealth" to it's employees.

Specialty clinics? Pharmaceutical company? Don't know yet, but it has to be a place where nurses value their own professional contribution to the company as much as people like physicians and bartenders do, instead of having this submissive desperation and martyr complex.

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Specializes in Addictions, Acute Psychiatry.

I'd love to work there and divert some cookies! Nightly!

I think it's cute...they're a cute little hospital boasting some motocross kid as their claim to fame so let em give cookies and milk. Everyone's a kid inside; I'd cook em and serve em if no one else would.

Who doesn't like hot chocolate chip cookies and milk? It definitely gives the patients the happies (my guess is less lawsuits, too...there is a correlation between stuff like that).

Screw it, let the docs hand em out if it's an ego thang! Everyone seems happy there; patients and nurses...why not?

My brother, every time he'd bake cookies would get an evil happy grin. We never ate sweets when we were young so it was fun; a treat when i'd visit his house.

If it's patient focused and it causes them to return then that's job security. Hospitals here aren't hiring, no nursing shortage cause no ones coming for electives.

Sure I'd have time to serve cookies during my teaching rounds. It's all a matter of organization. Don't have time to give meds? Throw em in the trash and chart em as given...just don't forget the COOOOOKIIEEESSS! LOL!

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.
Here's the video, folks ... from the hospital's website.

http://communityhospitalokc.com/

Wait for the features in the middle of the screen to scroll to the cookie video.

That's one hospital from which I would never seek care ... let alone seek employment.

Two words: GAG. ME.:devil:

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Specializes in Addictions, Acute Psychiatry.

I'm so sorry to say but I got serious cookie craving! LOL! I'm looking to see if I can make some (my fiancee has never cooked em before...neither have I but it should be fun and smell good)! Come on....doesn't everyone like chocolate chip cookies? I do know houses sell better when they have bread (key to a man's heart) baking. Some crazy study but there must be something to it!

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