It’s Raining Forms

I was recently teaching a nursing student who asked me what I hated most about the profession. At the time I answered, “waking up early”. It’s true – there is nothing I hate more than waking up before the sun has risen and shivering my ass off while I walk to the train station. Words can’t describe how much I hate early mornings. In fact, I refuse to schedule anything before 1400. I make no secret of the fact that I’m loathe to early morning activities so I was rather irked that my corporate education day was scheduled bright and early at 0800 in which management tried to indoctrinate me and fellow am haters into the society for filling out useless forms – twice. We sat there for a solid five hours listening to mindless drones drone on mindlessly about the necessity of filling out both online and paper forms for incident reporting, blood glucose monitoring, blood transfusion monitoring, order entry, narcotic records and a whole lot of other stuff. Suffice it to say, that my brain activity declined to nearly zero half way through that session.

When I got back to work the next time (for a bloody day shift too), the new documentation policies were in place. I tried to keep up with the mountain of paperwork while trying to provide meaningful care but inevitably fell behind because there are only 12 hours in a shift and my bladder and declining blood sugar levels can only be ignored for so long. On my way home, I felt quite awful for ignoring some of my patients and rushing them because I had to fill out pointless forms which were designed for the sole purpose of tormenting nurses. The following week, a staff meeting for the nurses was called by the nurse clinician and the manager to inquire about the ‘barriers’ that prevented us from filling out the forms. It was nice knowing that I wasn’t the only one being entombed by one useless form after another but having woken up early (again!), my brain to mouth filter was malfunctioning. I suggested that perhaps she should hire an army of form fillers so that the useless form gods are appeased with the sacrifice of millions of trees while patient care remains unchanged. Amidst the chuckles and snorts of my coworkers, I noticed that the manager and clinician were not amused but I still stand by my suggestion.

The next time I get asked what I hate most about nursing, I will now modify my answer to waking up early to fill out forms – twice!