our unit secretaries are lovely women. but so far as i've noticed, none of them (well, maybe one of them) can read or write or do "complicated math." you know, stuff like "we have 16 beds and 15 patients plus 2 in the or and three transfers out. how many beds will we have available at 7 pm?"
if you're in an isolation room doing a sterile dressing change or trying to stem the river of poop your patient is disgorging, and someone wants to talk to you on the phone, the secretaries page overhead "ruby, you have a phone call on line 1." followed immediately by "ruby, it's line 3." (they cannot even keep straight which line your call is on, which causes a lot of hard feelings from family members who have to hold forever and then get the wrong nurse and have to hold some more.) if you don't answer your call immediately, they'll page again. it seems they cannot be separated from facebook long enough to get up, come to the door of your room and find out why you aren't answering the phone. nor will they take messages. i only recently discovered that two of the secretaries don't take messages because they cannot read or write and the other two think it's beneath them.
i've always known our secretaries couldn't spell. you'd be surprised how many ways they can "spell" ruby. (roobee, rubbee, rubbie, rube, etc.) but it wasn't until, in a housekeeping frenzy, our manager rearranged all the forms at the secretary's desk that i realized they couldn't read. they had memorized the location of the forms they'd need and just grabbed them. it helped that so many of the forms were color coded.
now management is requiring a literacy test before hiring unit secretaries. i think it's a marvelous idea, but you would not believe how much resistance it's getting. you would think that literacy would be a job requirement. not so much, i guess.
how is it possible to graduate high school illiterate?
sad to say it happens much more than you might imagine it could.
i'm a literacyvolunteer with adults and am a "reading buddy" and "math buddy" at a local elementary school. (elementary school math has changed a lot since i was that age!)
Can't say that I've ever come across anyone who could not read. I've seen my fair share of people who couldn't spell. Just never anyone who couldn't read. That is truly sad.
can't say that i've ever come across anyone who could not read. i've seen my fair share of people who couldn't spell. just never anyone who couldn't read. that is truly sad.
scott,
what is both scary and sad is the large number of drivers (including big rig long haul truckers) who can't read at all. i have no idea how the heck they pass either test, but i've worked with four over
the years. part of what they do is to memorize shapes and landmarks, and use taped itineraries that someone who reads makes up.
Specializes in Trauma Surgery, Nursing Management.
We have a couple of OR techs that I am convinced cannot read. One of them barely speaks English. I recently went to get a liter of LR from one of the bins in the hallway that the OR techs (these are not scrub techs, but techs that transport patients, clean rooms, make blood bank runs, etc.) stock. To my shock, instead of LR, the bin was loaded with D5c20KCl. I immediately went to one of the techs standing in the hall and told him that these were the wrong fluids. He looked at me with a blank stare and said "But it has blue writing on it." Dude, seriously?
I feel your pain, the dumming down of America is here. I currently live in the rural Southeast and I can't believe how many can barely speak correct english and they were born here:eek:. Let alone read and write a correct sentence. It's the "no child left behind" program that gets them out of HS. I've worked in offices where the secretaries can't write a simple letter because they cain't spell and cain't talk using correct english. It's very very sad. There is a man who comes by every fall to cut down trees for me on my property and I'd asked for his phone number and handed him a slip of paper and pen and he handed it to his wife...I don't think he can read or write and he's only about 20 years old:eek:.
I am a RN and have been a unit secretary (doing different jobs/departments) in hospitals for 25 years. I ran a busy plastics, burns and reconstructive surgery unit and it was frantically hectic and unbelievably stressful. I worked with numerous surgeons (not just plastic surgeons), anaesthetists, neurosurgeons, registrars, etc round most of the hospital and could hardly keep track of theatre lists, let alone who I had to cancel and re-schedule. Theatre lists are an absolute nightmare to do. Plus we had roughly 200+ phone calls a day, Dr's wanting typing done, pre-and post op appointments to do, complaints from surgeons, patients & families, the usual admin work, trying to find anaesthetists/surgeons to cover lists when Drs rang in sick, ensuring the correct prostheses were ordered and in the right theatre for day of surgery, etc. Then when a list got cancelled, I would try to get hold of patients & if that didn't work, they would would turn up only to find their surgery wasn't on & that would create more stress. The pay was also pitiful for all the responsibity we had. I haven't even listed a third of the things I had to do.
I don't know what specific duties ur unit secretaries have to do, but I would say my old job was in many ways more stressful than nursing. Try dealing with angry/upset surgeons all day!
And how can a unit secretary not read or write at all??
I have done both sides of the job, and it's not as easy as you think. Though I agree they should be literate.
Remember all jobs can be very stressful. We as nurses make mistakes too.
Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.
How is it possible to graduate high school illiterate?
Almost. I do think you can make it out of some high schools with 2nd to 3rd grade level reading scores. I think in my area it's that they're swamped by students who are English as a Second Language and parents who don't care very much themselves. I'm not pointing fingers when I say that, but after a while "social promotion" kicks in.
When I signed up to take a few classes at the local Community College I discovered that now your placement test is to find out not IF you need remedial English, but just how sorely lacking you are in college level verbal skills. They didn't know quite what to make of my score - which they finally discovered fell in "exempt" and garnered a few looks that made me believe I must have seemed like some sort of freak to them.
Ruby - I sympathize! Overhead paging is barbaric! Our unit secretaries had to operate more in the manner as carolmacca did as they were expected to know what things were, why they were ordered and how to spell them, and the intricacies of scheduling certain tests and what needed to be done before the tests were done. Sort of a live-cat juggler. I wonder if anyone will ever do a study on the negative effect of Facebook on productivity in the workplace.
sharpeimom
2,452 Posts
sad to say it happens much more than you might imagine it could.
i'm a literacy volunteer with adults and am a "reading buddy" and "math buddy" at a local elementary school. (elementary school math has changed a lot since i was that age!)