Real-Life Decision Making -- Solution
You stay at work.
You've worked hard to advance through the ranks of the department, hoping to turn the job into a career. And you've done pretty well at it. But, like everyone else, you think that being sick is a bad thing. So you decide to stay at work, even though you're not as accurate as you would be if you were not working.
You make it through the day, though you catch a few minor mistakes as you work through the charts. By the time the day is over, you're so weak you can barely walk to your car to drive home. Once there, you drop into bed and are asleep before you even get your shoes off.
The next day, you're feeling better. You decide to go back to work.
Everything seems to go pretty well until just after lunch. You're called into your supervisor's office for a conference. You're pretty sure it's about the director's position.
It turns out that yesterday, when you were sick, you failed to include information about a patient's allergy to penicillin in her chart. When the patient was treated with penicillin, she had an allergic reaction. Although the doctor attending the patient was able to treat the allergy in time, this mistake has put the hospital at risk for being sued.
Your supervisor is more upset by the fact that she told you to go home and you stayed than she is by the mistake. Her reasoning is that if you had listened, then that patient would not have suffered as much as she did.
Your supervisor says you're not prepared to be the director of the medical records department. It takes a closer attention to detail than you have exhibited during your review period.
"You must be extreme about details," says Jolene Hoeschen. She is a medical records technician. "You have to be very thorough and organized, and if you're a broad overview type of person, you shouldn't be in medical records."