Another Miracle

Boy, has December been a busy month! First of all, my computer has crashed 3 times this month. It is halfway working now, though some buttons and links still are not functional on most web sites for me. I tried to write this blog this morning, but it showed up in Hindi script, and I wasn't able to disable the translation tool, so I am trying again.

We had our annual state survey two weeks ago. I usually don't worry too much about the survey; it is a necessary process, and I always do the best I can at my job, so whether or not someone is checking makes no difference to me. This year was different.

We have a quality assurance nurse assigned to our building by the state, and our Quan, as we call her, doesn't like me. She comes every month, looks through our charts, and always finds some assessment or care plan or other item that she points out (in front of my boss and all of the other managers that I work with) all of the errors that she finds. It is really embarrassing, especially when the errors usually weren't mine, even though she tells everyone else that they are. Then, I usually cry. I finally stopped letting her get to me about a year ago.

Then it happened: The office called down to my unit to notify me that our survey was here, as it is always a surprise visit. I stepped out in the hall to find HER! The Quan nurse was to be MY surveyor. She trumped another state nurse for the position to survey my hall. I felt sick.

I quickly did rounds with the nurse, and when she went off to the office to start working on the first part of her report, I went into the med room to throw up. But, instead, I stopped, took a deep breath, and started to pray. I know that God gave me the words and the thoughts for the prayer, because I didn't pray for what I normally would have. What came out of my mouth was, "Dear Lord, give us both mental clarity, to see what we need to see." I asked God to help her see that the patients were well-cared-for and happy. I asked Him to help me see their findings and answer their questions openly, without any bias or preconceived ideas about what they might "really" mean. And it worked!

By the end of the survey, they found only one item to site in our survey, and it was basically a documentation issue--and they found nothing on my unit! I take that back; the Quan nurse found several things that she asked me to fix, and they didn't ever make it into her report!

A miracle, indeed!

(P.S. the celebration was short-lived, as I contracted a very nasty stomach virus a few days later, and missed almost a week of work. Now I am working overtime to catch up--no time to celebrate. That is why I have been so lax on my blogging of late) Will do better soon!