‘Do It Yourself, White Boy!’ Life at the VA

 

Gil C / Shutterstock.comAnother lifetime ago, those five words were spoken to me in a VA hospital in New Orleans. Another typical civil service, morbidly obese nurse biding her time until retirement. The patient was a WW1 vet (who’d been gassed, etc.) and he needed to have his bladder catheterized. I wrote the order that was countersigned by a resident but it didn’t happen.

A few hours later I returned. I asked about it and was told,”Do it yourself, white boy!” So I did, although I fumbled my way through the procedure since his 90-year-old prostate was the size of Delaware. He’d been hurting for hours while this lady did her very minimal job as well as her nails.

Now let’s go to an actual VA doc who, when he resigned after a couple of years, was told by his boss that he was the worst employee ever. Funny thing, that doc was as bright, compassionate and motivated as any I’ve ever met. But being the “worst” actually meant he busted his bottom and refused to give in to the slothy culture which permeates ALL civil service life. Holding a meeting and resolving to eventually do something positive but never doing it was the norm. This “worst employee ever” could not deal with the rampant laziness and dysfunction. Having spent plenty of time in four VA hospitals, I can say this is epidemic.   

In the private world we bust our buns. Time is money and we have promises to keep, with miles to go before we sleep.  

In the civil service world, you kill your work time until the shift is over, doing the minimum and never rocking the boat. The patient life units are all just statistics anyway, right? They fought for our freedom but the basketball playoffs are on tonight, so just wait in line, buddy, and shut up.  

We are headed to a single-payer system eventually, albeit run through cronyist insurance agents who are in bed with bribed politicians. As Obamacare fails, this eventual system will emerge, populated by clock-punching robots without compassion or motivation. Does anybody even remotely think civil service hospitals for ALL will be anything better than our VA’s?

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  1. Karen Inactive
    Karen
    @Karen

    Lucy Pevensie:

    I’ve spent my life working at university hospitals with affiliated VAs…

    You cannot get a patient across the street to the university hospital without a huge paperwork hassle…

    Nah, it takes a signature from the Chief of Staff to send someone across the street. And my mother who was a hospice nurse and palliative care coordinator for over 30 years at a VA -and a damn fine one – would absolutely agree with what I observed regarding double-dipping by doctors, as would plenty of other people. It’s a known incentive. My affiliation with the VA continued into my adulthood, and I’m aware of how it functions. Many docs know how to work the system and do. And we wonder why there are waitlists for care. It is perpetuated when those docs rise through the ranks to become VA administrators, but the problem is bigger than that.

    • #61
  2. Karen Inactive
    Karen
    @Karen

    Another problem is one that you alluded to in your comment, Lucy. That is, that VA affiliated university hospitals use Veterans as a cash cow. They can’t get them over there fast enough. Like universities, many university hospitals are struggling financially. Another dirty little secret within the healthcare industry is that there are too many private hospitals. And some need to close. Folks don’t like going to downtown university hospitals when there are hospitals in the ‘burbs where they live. So they need Veterans as reliable income and to subsidize their expenses, like technology investments. University hospital employees have an incentive to denigrate VA employees, because those private sector employees have to justify their necessity to stay employed and keep their broke hospitals open, but they’re on the government teat. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Like Medicare, doctors and hospitals over-care so the taxpayer can pick up the tab. As to quality of the VA, show me a private healthcare system with 150 hospitals not including clinics and nursing homes that is as successful as the VA.

    • #62
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