Friday, December 21, 2012

Scripted Sincerity

Welcome to The Borg Collective.

On the radio, this morning, I heard a guy explain, with no sense of outrage (or even mild, wistful amusement) that hospitals, in order to get higher customer satisfaction ratings, are "scripting" doctors and nurses. For instance, they are telling a nurse who is transferring a patient to say things like: "Oh, you are going to the third floor. You'll have so-and-so as a nurse. She's wonderful."

Isn't that heart-breakingly hilarious? They are scripting the personal touch.

One must, after all, impress the queen bee of the hive, right? Or, in this case, the "team" that heads the "team," which is composed of more "teams."

Now, people are being told what to say in a workplace that is supposed to be driven under the energy of compassion and a desire to help others to heal. In a hospital, for God's sake. This is fine with the general population, because it is good for the work community. And what is good for the community is all that is important, right?

And what do you say, as a nurse or doctor? Do you say, "No, I won't do this," and risk losing your job in a struggling economy? No. Of course you don't. It doesn't seem like such a great evil, when you look at it that way. But, splice all of these little evils end-to-end, and you have the road to Orwell's worst nightmare.

I didn't start writing this blog with an agenda in mind, but you will notice that I keep coming back to this theme of the not-so-slow death of the individual in an increasingly hive-minded society. It just keeps slapping me in the face.

Well, call me old-fashioned, but when I get hit, I tend to hit back.

2 comments:

  1. What's additionally awful about this is that people who work in hospitals generally know which doctors are wonderful at their jobs and which ones you shouldn't let touch your body under any condition whatsoever. They're not always candid about sharing this knowledge with strangers, but hospitals shouldn't force them to mislead strangers...

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    Replies
    1. It's crazy, Jeff. But, I suppose "crazy" is the new "efficient."

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