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“The pharmacy department plays a vital role in hospitals. They prepare and dispense medications. Sometimes the pharmacist will receive an order from the doctor on a med whose written dosage he is not sure of. In some cases, the pharmacist will call the nurse in order to get clarification on this. The problem here is that the nurse did not write the order. The nurse does not have the authorization to write the order. The appropriate thing for the pharmacist to do is to call the doctor on this. We, in turn, tell the pharmacist to call the doctor. The pharmacist knows that this should have been done in the first place. The problem here is that the nurse has wasted valuable time talking to the pharmacist about something he should have never been called on, but this situation happens frequently. Here, we have a situation where the pharmacist is hoping that the nurse can do the doctor’s job.”
Anthony Langley is a nurse.
He shares his story and discusses his book, Nurses are Nuts.
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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.
Transcript
Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show we have Anthony Langley. He’s a nurse, and he wrote the KevinMD article, which is an excerpt from his book, “Nurses do not get paid extra for being pharmacists.” And again, that comes from his book, Nurses Are Nuts. Anthony, welcome to the show.
Anthony Langley: OK, thank you.
Kevin Pho: So we’ll get into your book in a little bit, but first off, can you tell me your story and your journey to where you are today?
Anthony Langley: Well, I didn’t start off in nursing. I used to live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and I had worked in a hospital as a security guard. What had happened at that hospital was that there was a nice male nurse by the name of Rich, and Rich, if you’re out there, I’m mentioning your name. A nice male nurse by the name of Rich would always bring me into the emergency room just to show me specific things that nurses did. It was a trauma hospital, so we received lots of stabbing victims and gunshot wounds and things of that nature, and he would just bring me back a lot of the time to let me view what nurses did. From there, I pretty much got interested in nursing.
Before I went to nursing school, I had gotten a degree in criminal justice. I was studying a little law at the time. To make a long story short, law was something that my father liked a whole lot, so I was pretty much doing it just to satisfy him, but it wasn’t the route I took. Again, I got interested in the nursing profession, being that I was working as a security guard, like I said, in this hospital, and this male nurse had started to show me a lot of things that nurses did, and I decided to pursue a nursing career.
I graduated from Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I think the year was 1990 when I graduated, and I pretty much started from there. I worked in Philadelphia for nine years at a hospital by the name of Hahnemann University Hospital, which is now closed. After 100 years, they finally closed the hospital, a lot of monetary issues and things like that. But anyway, I worked there for nine years, and then we moved to Florida. We moved to a little town called Kissimmee at first, and I worked at a hospital called the Orlando Regional Medical Center there. We ended up moving to South Florida. I have three children, and one of my daughters had gotten accepted to the University of Miami, so we wanted to move down to South Florida, a little bit closer to Miami, without actually moving to Miami. Since I was there, I’ve been at Boca Regional Hospital.
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Kevin Pho: All right, and tell me, what department do you practice in currently?
Anthony Langley: The recovery room.
Kevin Pho: Thank you. All right, and how are things there? We are speaking in the third week of August. How is the pandemic affecting your hospital?
Anthony Langley: It’s not too bad. Now, I’m not working there as much. It was at the beginning, because I had also ended up taking a position at a surgery center in Boca Raton hospital, and I put most of my work in there. So things just kind of tailed off a little bit, like I said, but things pretty much have slowed down because of the pandemic and stuff like that, so work has been a little scarce everywhere.
Kevin Pho: Sure. So let’s talk about your book, Nurses Are Nuts, a provocative title. Can you share with my audience why you decided to write your book and a little bit about what it’s about?
Anthony Langley: OK, well, what I wanted to emphasize in the book is the things that nurses do in the hospital for other professionals, for the other disciplines in the hospital. There are tons of things that nurses do in the hospitals for other professions, for the other, I keep saying professionals, for the other disciplines, that I feel nurses don’t have to do. We get no credit for it. We do tons of things for doctors. We do tons of things for the anesthesiology department, physical therapy, you name it. It goes on and on and on with nurses, and like I said, we don’t get any extra compensation or anything like that for doing those things. And a lot of times, we get no thanks for it at all from the other disciplines.
So I wanted to write a book to point this out to other nurses, that we are actually doing tons of things that we get no extra compensation for, that we get no extra thanks for, and I think it should just slow down, to stop.
Kevin Pho: What are some examples of things that you feel nurses are doing that are beyond their job scope and don’t get any credit for?
Anthony Langley: Well, not really beyond a job scope, but in other words, a lot of times doctors need things hooked up on the computer, X-ray results, lab results, and things of that nature, which they have access to doing themselves, but they never end up doing it. A lot of times, we end up doing it. There are times when patients are going home and they have to be taught crutch walking and things of that nature. That is a physical therapy department job. There are lots of times when the physical therapist will make it there in time; there are lots of times when they’re on break, this, that, and the other. So we end up doing that, just various things like that.
Kevin Pho: And have nurses spoken up against this? Is there any recourse, or anything that the hospital can do to fix this issue?
Anthony Langley: Well, that’s my issue. Nurses, we don’t speak up. We talk about it among ourselves, Kevin. There’s a lot of complaining among ourselves that we’re doing this, we’re doing that, we shouldn’t be doing it, but we never bring it to the right.
Kevin Pho: And why is that?
Anthony Langley: Good question. I’m not sure. I’ve mentioned it in the past. I said, “You know what? Maybe we should talk to somebody about this.” But the conversations and stuff like that never get too far.
Kevin Pho: Let’s take a step back. I’m interested in hearing more about your journey from being a security guard to a nurse. Now, how difficult was that transition, and what were some of the challenges that you faced in making it?
Anthony Langley: Well, it wasn’t really hard leaving it, but like I said, I got a lot of information on what nurses were doing from this gentleman by the name of Rich in the emergency room there. So the only difficult thing, Kevin, I guess I would say, was maybe when I got into the nursing field, the nursing courses themselves. Just like anything else, there was a lot I had to learn and a lot I had to study and things of that nature, so that in itself was a challenge, getting to the nursing curriculum. But once I got into it and got into the nursing profession, things worked out pretty good.
Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Anthony Langley. He’s a nurse, and he wrote the book Nurses Are Nuts. Anthony, what’s the solution here? We have a lot of hospital administrators who listen to this podcast, so what kind of suggestions can you offer to them right now?
Anthony Langley: Well, what I would tell them to do, more than anything, is start to talk to the nurses. Try to talk to the nurses and find out what their concerns are. Try to find out if there’s some type of remedy or whatever that could possibly help nurses, like I said, in their everyday job. I’m quite sure that most nurses would agree with me that we do tons and tons and tons of work that we shouldn’t be doing, that we don’t have to be doing. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s been since I’ve been in nursing.
Kevin Pho: Sure. And my final question, Anthony: Do you have a take-home message that you want to share with the KevinMD audience?
Anthony Langley: Basically, I would just tell nurses to keep fighting the good fight. Keep reporting to work. Keep doing what you can do to keep patients happy and safe. If you have concerns, or if things aren’t going the way they should go, or if you feel that things aren’t going the way they should go, maybe talk to your managers for starters, because that is how you would go through the chain of command anyway. First, you’re not going to go to the president of the household; you’re going to talk to your manager first and see if things can be worked out that way. I guess that’s where I’m going to start, and go from there. And then again, if you’re not getting what you want from your particular manager, then maybe try to escalate and move up the chain of command.
Kevin Pho: Sure. Well, thank you so much for sharing your time and insight, Anthony, and thanks again for being on the show.
Anthony Langley: OK, and thank you for having me, sir.
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