Month: August 2009

On Triage

· 1 Comment ·

Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook might have noticed that I had a bout with food poisoning on Thursday night that landed me in the Emergency Room. I’m feeling much better now, but had an unfortunate experience with triage in the ER.

We had elected not to call an ambulance; my husband drove me to the hospital (with me in the fetal position in the front seat). I walked myself into the ER and told them I was in excruciating stomach pain. They handed me a pager and told me to sit down. By the time my husband parked and walked in, I was back in that fetal position and sobbing from pain. (I don’t cry much; this really freaked him out.)

Somehow, my sobbing from the pain (where everyone else in the waiting room looked much, much healthier) didn’t change my order in the triage queue. The patients were all staring at me and wondering what was going on, but this didn’t seem to phase the nurses.

What happened? Well, I got pushed to a “normal” place in the queue, I believe, for the following reasons:

  • I didn’t arrive in an ambulance.
  • I walked in on my own two feet.
  • I was able to articulate what was wrong with me.
  • I occasionally made jokes, despite the pain (this is how I deal with pain. Weird, yes. I think it’s to make everyone around me feel better).

The Help Desk is one of my departments at work, and I realized that they have to triage as well. It’s very easy for them to mentally dismiss anything stated to them calmly, even though the situation might be much more severe than it looks at first glance. Had I needed my stomach pumped emergently or it was something other than food poisoning, the way I was triaged would have ended with serious health consequences for me. In customer support, you always have to treat the problem as it deserves, rather than according to the way you perceive the person to act. That’s the only way to properly triage anything.

On Passion

·

I keep contemplating the recent statistics that indicate some huge percentage of workers will be fleeing their jobs once the economy bounces back. I find I’m more interested in the other side; the people who want to stay in their jobs. What makes them want to stay? Aren’t they under the same pressures as the others? Aren’t they just as overworked? Don’t they have the same bosses/teammates/working environments?

While some of them might not have the same boss/pressure/working environment ugliness that the “departers” do, I think most of the “stayers” are probably in the same situations as their cohorts. I think the biggest difference is that the stayers love something about what they do.

They might not like certain aspects (boss/pressure/etc.), but there is something about the stayers’ current jobs that ignites their passion. Maybe they love the work. Maybe they love the industry. Maybe they love the team or the flex hours or the proximity to their kids’ schools. Whatever it is that they love, it’s both a personal priority and a passion.

If you’re one of the departers, you probably want to consider your priorities and passions for your next job. If you haven’t identified what’s important to you, you probably won’t find it. If you don’t find it, you’ll be yet another departer. Personally, I’d much rather be a stayer. How about you?