Doctors are to patients as Hospital Maintenance Staff are to...
Doctors!(is the answer to the above analogy)
This idea has occurred to me repeatedly while I've worked at the University of Washington Medical Center's Operations & Maintenance department: while the doctor's job is to "fix" the person, the Maintenance workers "fix" the physical body of the hospital (plumbing, heating/ventilation systems, lighting, carpentry, and other various utilities).
I wonder whether this analogy occurrs to the docs/nurses who call our department, expecting immediate answers and treatments...just as they must tell patients to wait for test results or for available appointments, we at Ops & Maintenance tell the nurses and docs to wait their turn for their maintenance work to be done!
I recognize the slight tone of panic and frustration due to a lack of control in the nurses who call us to request work to be done, and I am reminded of my own experiences with not knowing how to "fix" my own body as a patient. I believe it's even harder for people accustomed to the caregiving and "helping" role to wait around for someone else to help.
Back to the analogy: I never thought of buildings this way before working in the Ops & Maintenance Department of the hospital, but they really are like living beings themselves (heating and air ventilation systems being analagous to lungs, plumbing systems being analagous to the kidneys/urinary tract...or would they be the capillaries?), although I can't quite decide what part of the hospital would be the "brain" (perhaps the people working within it, to guide it's activities? or is the hospital really more like a cell, with the humans being the nuclei? or, nowadays, would computers be the nuclei? if a light bulb burns out, is it really an instance of "equiptment failure?" is there a God?)...
Before I lose myself in abstract-land (so much fun!), I'll end my sentiment here; i'm tempted to get on a soapbox and expound upon how vital maintenance workers are (despite their relative lack of respect compared to doctors), but I'll allow my aforementioned thoughts to lead readers to whatever conclusions they wish to draw (and, yes, i understand i'm being wildly optimistic by referring to those who might peek at my blog as "readerS" rather than "reader," the singular tense referring, of course, to my mom). | posted by Cheryl, 2/08/2006 11:51:00 PM
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