crammed in a drawer or a locker. The hospital provided lunch. Then
there'd be the requisite quiz — and you didn't have to guess 7 out of 10
right to pass.
Never-ending nesting dolls
Today, onboarding is more like waterboarding. You get 5 days of in-
depth presentations and hands-on demonstrations about every hospi-
tal department. It's like Back-to-School Week. Everything starts at
0800, and if you're late, you might get to make it up … or not. You get
30 minutes for lunch — and you're on your own. Those at the head of
the class had the foresight to brown bag it. I think the No-Lunch
Lunch is actually a cruel test to see if you consider variables or do
you just function on gut reaction when you don't plan?
The quizzes are now major online competency exams. You can only
miss 1 or 2 questions (so I've heard) if you expect to pass and advance
to the next overwhelming module (the modules are like nesting dolls
that never seem to end — the more you open, the more detailed they
become). Some modules are pass-or-fail. The program will shut down
once you've guessed wrong one too many times and instruct you to
take the walk of shame so you can ask the educator to readmit you
into that module. By the way, you don't retake the test you failed. They
give you a new set of questions in case you took pictures of previous
tests with your phone.
A quick aside: It's funny, they spend a whole day on the facility's
mission statement, values and vision, and I still haven't found, in any
hospital that I've worked in the last 35 years, that everyone walks the
talk. Actions speak louder than buzzwords like "healing ministry,"
"care of the whole person — body, mind and spirit" and "not-for-profit
healthcare system." Not for profit? Where is all that money going to?
Behind Closed Doors
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