I do building maintenance at a hospital. When you submit a request for a repair, please be specific. "Toilet don't work" just isn't enough. Is it clogged? Does the water not flow when flushed? What is it? Also, I wish the floor staff would stop keeping the Soft-N-Fresh paper towels in the patient rooms. Some CNA's and patient's family seem to think these are great toilet paper until they clog up their toilet. And what is it about women who just gave birth that makes them think pads go in the toilet? I've had to deal with a nurse cursing me out for a tv not working in an empty room when the only thing wrong was she was too stupid to realize it wasn't plugged in the electrical socket. We had a roof leaking water near the station's kitchen and the floor supervisor tried to order me to go on the roof in the middle of a thunder storm to put out tarp to stop the leak. I tried to be as polite as possible when I told her no and if she didn't like it to write me up. I've pulled knives, straws, food, and paper out of the drain pipe of a sink in NICU and the nurses there said, "well why don't you install a garbage disposal?". I went off on her and told her why should the hospital pay for you to have a disposal when you're putting things in the sink that would break a disposal. Also, if something is broken and is important, send a request to maintenance. Don't wait until you happen to see us in a hall and say, "oh, by the way, since you're here,..." If we're on the floor then we're already busy with something and we don't have perfect memory to remember all of our duties as well as the one you "happen" to remember when you saw us. If a patient is complaining they are too hot or too cold, send a maintenance request before requesting a fan and don't assume that since you're comfortable that the patient is imagining they're hot or cold. I enjoy making the patient's comfortable. I hate seeing a patient sweating for days before someone bothers to let us know of the problem. And quit opening windows. We have some nurses who constantly open windows because they're either too hot or too cold while everyone else is comfortable. Stick your head in the freezer if you're having hot flashes and leave the windows alone. And to the ER staff members, if you have the key to access the elevators' independent service, remember to turn it back to normal when you're finished. Also for the ER, get your own tools. I don't mind bringing tools to the ER for medical staff to use on a patient but they always seem to expect me to use the tools on the patient which ain't gonna happen. One genius wanted me to bring my greasy boiler room tools to surgery. No, I didn't bring them the tools to use on a patient. Surgery has sterile tools for that, they just had to get off their lazy backsides to go find them for themselves. There are a few good nurses here where I work, but they are so few that all the lazy ignorant ones stand out. How about the floor that decided to take the education TV VCR cart to their desk, turn off all the lights, pop some popcorn, and watch a movie for their shift? Yep, they did that and yep, I reported them, and yep, they got a light slap on the wrist. That's what happens when your administration is made up of majority of former nurses. They can do no wrong while every other staff can't do anything right.
