Unhealthy Practices

The poor fellow was running with two small bottles of blood samples in his bare hands, and test requisition forms in the other. Taking blood samples to a laboratory is a job done by a person employed to do it. He goes to all wards and collects all blood samples on his trolley. Here was an intern trying to do it. I stopped him and asked him what he was doing. He was reluctant to stop, his attention outside the door. But he did stop and said “I am taking these blood samples to the fellow with a trolley, who has gone with the other blood samples”. “Do they not supply you with gloves?” I asked. “Don't you know better than to handle blood samples without gloves? Have you not heard of HIV and othe blood-borne infections you can catch by handling blood without protection?” He did not answer that question. Instead he said “That fellow is in the next ward. I have to give him these samples.” I let him go, because if he missed him, he probably would have to go to the laboratory himself. Why the servants would not do the job is obvious – they don't want to work if they can avoid it. Why the sisters under whose control they are don't make them work is perhaps less obvious. They might be afraid of something. Why the administrators who control the servants won't make them do their work is perhaps fear of trouble from the servants' union. I asked the concerned unit residents why they had made that fellow do a servant's work, and they had no answer. I also asked them why they had not educated him about safety measures in handling blood, and they had no answer to that one also. Finally I asked them to see to it that they they did not make doctors in training do servants' work. They promised to do that. All this was being watched by their boss, who was in his street clothes taking ward round with them. He appeared aloof, as if he had nothing to do with all this. I asked him if he did not even have an apron as was required. He immediately said “I couldn't find one. I looked twice.” I was aware that he always came up with an excuse, like school children do. I was also aware that his aprons were very much in the bundle in which all aprons of staff memebrs are kept after they are returned by the laundry. I had seen them while getting mine. I just made a gesture of hopelessness. “I will look again” he said and went away. He came back in one minute wearing an apron. I did not ask him how he found one when he had failed on two previous occasions. I knew he would have said “it has just come from the laundry” or some such thing. The previous time I had found him telling untruth like this in connection with a resident doctor and confronted him, he had thrown a tantrum, said a lot of irrelevant things, had developed tremors, and I had got worried he would perhaps break a vessel in his head or something. It was not worth it, bexcause his tarck record showed he had never changed for better. What troubles me is that the residents working under such a person may also pick up such traits, which will be detrimental to themselves as well as to the institute.