Study Finds Hospitals Still Unsafe

Posted by
Mike
on November 27, 2010

A lot of medical mistakes being made are due to the way the medical work is organized. Or I should say, disorganized.

I used to work in a medical laboratory, where the management one day decided to make drastic changes in the workflow there. Instead of having the workers rotate between 4 different types of work and stay in each type for 2-3 months at a time. The management increased the rotation to 9 different types of work. And the workers got to stay only 2-3 weeks in each type of work.

Of course, this greatly increased the amount of competence and knowledge each worker needed to have at his and her fingertips. And I'd say that such work organization exceeded some human limitations, at least it did for me.

It took me about a week to become completely familiar and comfortable at my new work station, every time I was moved. And moving every 2 weeks like this was a little too much for me. Because half of the time I wasn't quite sure if I was doing everything right, and I was afraid that I would make a big mistake some day.

I tried my best. I didn't make any big mistakes. And I had very good performance reviews from my supervisors. But I left that workplace anyway and found another job. Because I really didn't feel comfortable working this way, and there was nothing I could do to change it.