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Re: Letter of complaintFrom: Martin Necas and Tania Keep (exiled@clear.net.nz)Thu Aug 20 02:42:19 1998
Dear Suzy, I sympathize with you. Having complaints brought against one can be an uneasy experience even if you have done nothing wrong. You must work with a fair group of people- since your boss acknowledges that the complaint holds on water, you have not breached any ethical expectations, and you are therefore cleared of the charge- end of story. I and my colleagues also enjoy working along with radiologists, and a manager who are very supportive of their staff. I think it is extremely important in a job to have support of the senior/managerial staff. I feel saddened by the stories of those sonographers who were implicated in similar complaints and who were reprimanded by their superiors regardless of the complaint being quite unreasonable. Many Regards, Martin Necas, RDMS, RVT Waikato Hospital, Hamilton, New Zealand. -----Original Message----- From: Suzy5324@aol.com [mailto:Suzy5324@aol.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 1998 3:19 AM To: Sonographers-Connection@Lists.UCHSC.edu Subject: Letter of complaint Today I need to vent. I had an awful thing happen to me yesterday. A patient wrote a very nasty two page letter complaint about me to my boss. In all the years of my work....since 1977.....I have never had one complaint about me. This patient was really nuts, but I have to remember that patients have a lot of power. They can also sue, and literally ruin someone's career. And all it takes is one nut-case like that. The funny thing about it was that at the time of the exam she never gave me a clue that she was unhappy. First, the patient wanted her sister-in-law in the room. That may have been a mistake on my part to allow that, but I work in a high income yuppie hospital now, so what the patient says goes. I really have a hunch that the sister-in- law wrote the letter, not the patient. The patient came in for a pelvic sono to rule out blighted ovum due to low levels BHCG. She was supposed to be 10 weeks pregnant. She asked me alot of questions about ultrasound, miscarriage, blighted ovum, ect. I answered them the best I could, and I asked HER the usual questions about her LMP, vaginal bleeding, pain, ect. When I finished the TA I told her that I could not see anything in her uterus, and that I would have to take a closer look with the EV probe. I sent her to the bathroom to empty her bladder. After starting the EV exam, I had difficulty examining her due to excessive gas. I commented that her bladder was still a little full, and she was a little gassy. The sister- in-law, who was standing behind me, asked me what I meant by "gassy". And I then explained that sometimes gas can interfere with my view of things, but I assured them that having gas is normal and that some people have more gas than others. After I finished the exam, I showed the films to the radiologist. The exam resulted in the patient having a 5 week SIUP with no embryo yet. Both the patient and her sister-in-law left what seemed to me not unhappy. I still am very despondent and sad about that letter of complaint. No matter what people tell me, (and they tell me just to forget it and not to worry about it), this will take time for me to get over. The letter was extremely viscious and untrue.She said that I was very insensitive to her, and that I said things to her which were very inappropriate and that I should have kept my mouth shut especially about the gas and her bladder. Everytime I think about it I want to cry and I get very upset. How could anyone be so heartless to do this to me? I just don't understand it. I never had a clue that she was unhappy with me. I am really scared now to even scan a patient , or to say anything to a patient. It has been a long time since I feel hurt like this. But, I know that soon this too shall pass. My boss read the letter and said that the it didn't make sense to him, and that the lady was obviously very confused. He said that the things she wrote as being inappropriate behavior on my part was actually very appropriate for the exam I was doing. He told me not to worry about it either. That very easy for him to say, since he wasn't the brunt of the letter. The interesting part about all this is that the lady had called one of my co- workers wanting the correct spelling of my name and my boss' name, because she wanted to write a letter of compliment to my boss about the wonderful job I had done and tell him how nice I was to her. Go figure....... Thanks for listening everybody, regards, Suzanne Hettena
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