SCUT, a scene

Prologue: Scut work. We've all gotten it in spades over the past two years and we'll continue to get it, although I presume it'll get less as you move up the residency food chain. It's a part of the hospital culture no matter where you go, no matter who you work with. I, personally, don't really care about scut work. I'm laid back, I'm easy-going, and as long as it's not taking up 95% of my day or interfering with actual patient care or my learning, I will gladly run ABGs for you or check echo reports or track down the results of an errant sputum culture or convince the mildly demented patient with the dropping H/H to let the phlebotomist draw their blood. I'm decidedly less enthusiastic about having to Guaiac patients, but again, no one said being a doctor in training was supposed to be glamorous! Residents always seem so apologetic when they ask me to do "scutworthy" stuff and honestly? It's not a big deal! It comes with being a part of a team- stuff needs to get done and someone has to do it. And if I can do it, great! At the end of the day, it's all ultimately in the name of trying to help your patients get better.

However, when I get scutted to do something that has absolutely no bearing on patient care, my education, or the hospital in general, I get a little miffed.

Scene: 10 am. Four consults to see, two of them stat. The NP is tied up with doing follow-ups and getting clearances for patients who need to get scoped. Believing that the best offense is a strong defense, I'm gathering info from the EMR, checking labs, and hunting down CT scans before I go see my patients. Makes sense right?

The Attending, (who I will creatively call Dr. X) interrupts me because they need help printing out TWO YEARS worth of CMEs. Figuring it's an issue of "where's the print button?" I think nothing of it and go to help, all the while thinking to myself, why are you doing this in the middle of the day when your schedule is clearly packed with procedures that need to get done?

First Dr. X wants me to see if all the CMEs can be printed out at the same time. I peruse the site, toggle back and forth, try a few things and see that there's no option to "select all and print, which I relay to Dr. X. Dr. X mutters some choice phrases about technology and I go back to doing my work.

"Can you call tech support and ask them if there's some way to print them all at once? There must be SOME way. Here's the number and here's my account information."

(That wasn't really a question, now was it? Also, there's a phone right next to you, and they're your CMEs, why can't you call?)

"Um, sure, let me just finish getting the CT report for this stat consult (who, btw, incidentally appears to have a raging case of cholangitis!) and I'll do that."

"No, no, just do it now would you? It won't take too long."

WTF.

So I call. Fortunately, I am not put on hold long. In about four seconds, the person on the other end confirms what I already know. It can't be done. Each CME has its own letter associated with it and each letter has to be printed out individually. I relay this information to Dr. X yet again and go back to my computer.

"So I have to print these out individually? That's so stupid. I hate all this bureaucracy. They're always breathing down our necks."


(Non-committal noises from me)

Fifth consult gets added to my list. I don't particularly mind- I like the work- and consults give me a chance to get my note-writing swag on. I write pretty sexy notes, if I do say so myself. Enough time with the best resident in the world has taught me how to do that really well.

But I digress.

"Listen, will you print these for me? I need to submit everything from 2010 and 2011 so that these fools stop bothering me."


Annoyed, but still pleasant- "Sure. I just want to go see these consults first because two of them were put in stat and one of these is an ICU patient but I can help you with that once I get back and finish my notes."

(Hey it's a med student who actually wants to go do urgent medical things instead of sitting in front of a computer printing out CMEs! What a novelty!)

"No no, why don't you just print it all now before you go so I won't have to worry about it later. The patients aren't going anywhere. I need to go scope this next patient but just take care of it for me will ya?"


ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! What do I even say to that?! I can't exactly tell an Attending to buzz off, but seriously?! I have FIVE consults, one of them with LFTs through the roof who probably has sclera the color of that banana you're eating and you want me to push them off so that you don't have to worry about printing your frigging CMEs? Newsflash: your CMEs aren't going to go into septic shock if they don't get an ERCP but my patient might!!

To add insult to injury, I ended up printing out approximately 50 pages of CME letters (TWO years worth, let me remind you), one by one. It was all I could do to veil the annoyance that had to be showing on my face as I handed the entire stack to Dr. X who then had the gall to go "So that was simple right? You just had to print them out individually? That's great!" 


O_o

Moral of the story: if your med student repeatedly mentions she wants to go see her patients before she does non time-sensitive, completely useless scutwork for you, you should probably let her go see her patients!

Two days left on this rotation and four weeks left to fourth year. THANK GOD.