Ring Those Bells, Just Not in My Ears

            For twenty-six of the thirty-six years of my nursing career, I was a nursing supervisor. In the small hospital where I worked, I wasn’t only responsible for any nursing problems with staffing, complaints from staff, patients, or families, bed assignments, and problems with physicians, but all were issues that occurred in the hospital. Every issue that impacted the patient became my concern and fell on my shoulders to resolve.

            One of the major irritations to me was the frequent barrage of telephone calls. I have always hated talking on the telephone and will often put off making a call until it could no longer wait. With my job, it was almost a constant necessity that I was on the phone. I would have to call for extra staff, cancel staff, or pass on information to patients about their next day surgeries. I would have to field calls of complaints, questions about medical problems, or taking phone orders from physicians for admissions or outpatient testing. I wasn’t immune to really ridiculous outside calls either. One call was forwarded to me by the switchboard. The caller needed to know how to spell a word and it wasn’t a medical term.

            Many times, I would walk through the hospital to talk with a person face-to-face instead of making the dreaded phone call. Part of it was the desire not to use the phone and the other part was that I enjoyed the interaction with another person.

            All of these memories were stirred because of several calls that I need to make tomorrow. The reminders are on the desk in front of me and I am thinking, “Are there any that can wait, one more day?” I know that I’m very much the opposite of many people today. These folk would almost die if they didn’t have their cell phones glued to their ear, but that isn’t me.

            I never liked my voice on a tape recorder and that may be part of it. I don’t take a lot of selfies to share. I’ve never considered myself “poster-worthy.” Who wants to look at a Bizzaro world Col. Sanders?