PITTSBURGH, PA – Hospital administrators at Pittsburgh Healthcare have developed an innovative approach to minimize handoffs and maximize continuity of care. The new Hire-Retire (HR) approach completely removes the need for handoffs by ensuring any healthcare practitioner works continuously, without rest or breaks, from employment hiring to retirement.
“Why rest and go home when you can work?” asked hospital administrator Colin Blacksuit. “Every change in shift and every handoff has the potential for miscommunication. If our providers work continuously for minutes, hours, days, decades straight, we maximize continuity of care and eliminate handoffs for good. It’s perfect! If you discharged a patient six months ago and he’s back, you’ll know him since you haven’t left work yet. It also eliminates the need for overnight call and a jeopardy system since everyone will be here anyway. It’s flawless!”
Pittsburgh Healthcare administrators implemented the HR two years ago and have fallen head over heels ever since. Nurses, doctors, and other healthcare practitioners are less excited and have fallen over from sheer exhaustion.
“This is one LONG shift,” explained sleep-deprived physician assistant Samantha Johns, who is 8,712 hours into her 3-decade or 262,800-hour shift. “Will you excuse me? Samantha needs some more coffee. Definitely Samantha needs some more coffee to get through this [expletive].”
“I need to give report, I need to give report NOW!” begged baggy-eyed, burned-out nurse Megan Davenport, who hasn’t had a day off since she started her job back in January 2013. “I’m not going to make it. I’m so not going to make it. This is insanity!! Is this even ethical?!”
Nope. It isn’t.
Because of immense job dissatisfaction, healthcare practitioners started conducting an investigation into the detrimental effects of the HR model, which began last month. In the OMG–WTF study, investigators have found a 2300% increase in medical errors and an 1800% increase in adverse effects. Though handoffs have decreased to nearly zero, burnout is 100%. The investigation concluded that “handoffs are nonexistent, but so is good patient care.”
“Details, shmetails,” commented Blacksuit when presented with the overwhelmingly negative data from the HR approach. “No handoffs though, isn’t it amazing? And check out my pen, isn’t it shiny? It’s so shiny!” Blacksuit was unavailable for further comment, as a green, fuzzy tennis ball thrown down the hallway by our team of GomerBlog reporters distracted him.
