"When we make mistakes, people die"

I've noticed an odd thing when I tell people I work at a hospital; people get excited. There's a warm fuzzy blanket of prestige that comes with working at a place where, presumably, lives are saved (I've never seen anyone's life get saved here, but from 'Scrubs' I gather thats the sort of thing that happens at a hospital. That, and there are plenty of confusing love triangles and multi-ethnic friendships).
I've also noticed an odd thing when I tell people what I actually do at a hospital; all that excitement gives way to the cold wet blanket of pity.
"I'm a receptionst", I tell them. And they give me that look that tells me that they're comparing our lives, and I'm the one coming up short.

You'd be surprised how many lives don't depend on my job. Really.
Literally thousands of people who will not die if I make a mistake. They wont even get injured if I make a mistake. The worse thing that happens to them is they have to wait a few minutes, or I don't get to the phone in time and they have to leave a voice mail.

(On a related note, I asked my boss to change my title from 'Office Manager', which sounds very important for what I do, to 'Phone Monkey', which sums up my tasks rather honestly, I thought. My request was denied)

For every doctor working to save lives at this hospital, you have at least one Phone Monkey. Our job is to do the things the doctors are too busy saving people to do themselves (like manage schedules, and write things legibly).
For every nurse who is helping those doctors save lives, there is a security guard or cleaning person.
And for everyone else who does important sounding things, there's a group of people who seem to exist just for the purpose of carting scrubs from one area of the building to another. I have no idea what these people actually do; all I see them do is push giant carts of various colored scrubs from one end of the hospital to the next. Every morning and afternoon I see at least 10 people doing this.

But there is a good side to having more Phone Monkeys, cleaners, and scrub-pushers than actual doctors at a hospital (several good sides - inlcuding the fact that the doctors are using clean instruments, in a sterile room, wearing recently traveled scrubs, while not having to answer the phone, while they perform surgery).
Here's the best thing, though; because there are so many layers of administration, it is nearly impossible for my actions to result in someone's death.

The most common cause of death or serious injury at a hospital is due to administrative error. I know this is a fact, because I read it somewhere I've since forgotten and it was based on a study I'm too lazy to look up. These things are probably true.

And, boy, do humans make a lot of mistakes. But you can rest easy knowing that when I (or another Phone Monkey) makes a SERIOUS mistake, it's corrected faster than you can push scrubs around a hospital.

For example, if I write down the wrong kind of anesthetic for my doctors upcoming surgery, guess what happens?
I get a call from the surgery scheduling department informing me of my mistake and letting me know it was corrected. And not an angry call, mind you, but a pleasent call, full of 'working hard or hardly working'-esque jokes.
And what happens if the surgery scheduling department miss the mistake?
The surgical nurses notice it.
And, if by chance, all of those people are drunk or maimed by a bear and in too much pain to double check my work, the doctor will verify my instructions not once, but twice before entering surgery.
If all else fails, he'll probably notice when they attempt to use the wrong anesthetic during the actual surgery, but (at least for me) the problem has never gone that far.

So next time you're at a hospital and notice the scrub pusher to doctor ratio is skewed heavily in a direction you're not comfortable with, remember this; though it is virtually impossible for that scrub pusher to accidently kill someone during his shift, the chances are he just might catch an error that saves someone's life.

Now, if you'll excuse me, my phone is ringing.