My Story

The chronicle of the journey from infertility, to miscarriage, to finally raising twin girls born in June 2012.

Monday, December 27, 2010

Just got a phone call

From someone representing the hospital to take a satisfaction survey.  Are you fucking kidding me????

How on earth is anyone going to respond that they are "satisfied" in this situation????

On a scale of 1-5..........  Seriously????

There is no way I can answer that I'm satisfied about any portion of this process.  But I'm also aware that it wasn't the fault of the personnel.

So my options are either to say that I'm satisfied with the care I received, my babies just died, how the fuck can anyone be "satisfied", or say that I'm not satisfied with any aspect of this experience and have it reflect negatively on the people that were there that did nothing wrong.

I realize the person on the phone was just doing her job, but come on.

I finally just stopped her and said there was no way in hell I was going to be able to answer her questions.  But did she have a list of the personnel that was involved in front of her?  She did.  So I told her that the only thing I would be able to say is that the young nurse, another K name, she did everything I asked her to do, she did it the way I asked her to do it, and she's a credit to her profession and I would like to be put into her personnel file.  But other than to say that, there was no way I would ever be able to claim any satisfaction about the situation even though that should not reflect on the personnel.

Satisfied.  Satisfied?  AM I SATISFIED?!?!?!

You know what assholes?  I worked in marketing research for 5 years writing the fucking surveys like the one I was just presented with.  Hire me and I'll write you one that will give you the feedback you need without trying to make a person who just experienced the most profound loss of a lifetime say that they're fucking satisfied.

You just called a woman 5 days after the death of her most fantasized about babies.   To someone in the throws of grief, 5 days feels like 5 minutes and 5 years at the same time.

I know perfectly well that I received the best care possible.  That everyone did exactly what they were supposed to do.  Only one thing about their behavior irked me and that was that some of the diagnosis was done over the phone rather than by looking at me.  And even in my emotionally shattered state, I still recognize that nothing would have been different about his diagnosis if he had driven to the hospital, pulled out the ultrasound, checked me out, said the exact same thing he would have said over the phone, and driven back home.

And yet even having the brain power to know that, how can ANYONE say they are satisfied?  Nothing short of someone with the magical prowess of Albus Dumbledore waiving his most powerful magical wand over my belly while shouting "In Utero Reparo!" and the magical resurrection of my girls in perfect health would ever allow me to say that I'm "Satisfied" with my care.

Your survey is heartless, pointless, and just so fuckyouable.  It doesn't tell you a fucking thing.  And I speak from experience.  From years of learning how to write those fucking surveys in such a manner as to yield only clean information untainted by emotional response.

You, market research company of pure shame, are doing your employers a disservice.  And YOU, hospital board of directors of bean counting inhumanity are not only breaking your doctoral oath (first, do no harm) but you're not even doing so in pursuit of something useful and are thus inflicting completely pointless pain.  Oh wait, let me rephrase in terms that you actually give a shit about.  You're throwing money away and getting nothing in return for it.  And I know that behind the scenes, the personnel on the front lines are paying for your incompetence.  No one can say they are satisfied.  You are getting back surveys that say your staff sucks and I just know that you are evaluating and punishing them according to those survey results.

You can not get quantitative data from someone who has just been to the emergency room!  It's a fucking qualitative life event that can not be defined in numbers!  Wait a month assholes.  Send a qualitative survey in the mail so the victim can either tell you the details of the information you need, or throw it out if they can't handle it.  Yes, it costs more.  Yes, it takes actual brain power to interpret the information it gathers.  But at least that information would be, you know, fucking informative?  It might actually fucking tell you something.

Fuck heads.

1 comment:

  1. Making me want to shout out YES! Exactly! and DUH all at the same time.

    ReplyDelete

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