Internal Customer Service

Today I have been thinking a lot about internal customer service. Yes, it seems like a strange thing or it may even be a foreign concept to most....but I have been trained on internal customer service.

Yes, another work training. Although not at this job...a long time ago in a land far, far away...well it wasn't that far away but it was a pretty long time ago when I was a fresh new nurse and I worked in Intensive Care.

Now, Intensive Care nurses are not known for their...nice manners. Mostly they are type A, very perfectionistic (I may have just made that word up!) and on the edge of crabby (only it is a harsher word that is usually used).
Anyway, there were some complaints. Now, I didn't exactly fit the whole mold of the typical ICU nurse....but I really enjoyed the work and I am a little perfectionistic. I am not a hard person to get along with and I don't usually go out of my way to tick people off. But, you know how it is....a whole group can get labled pretty easily.

So....back to the complaints. It seems some of the other departments in the hospital had gotten their feelings hurt by some rude behavior by the ICU staff. In answer to that we ALL had to attend an Internal Customer Service training for 2 hours. In that training we learned to identify the difference between internal customers (co-workers, other departments etc) and external customers (the poor saps that were in the hospital as patients). We also learned that customer service to both types of customers is extremely important and necessary for the smooth and happy work environment. Ok.
In addition to the training our ICU supervisor had a mandatory meeting with all of us and stressed the importance of playing nice and challenged us all to find ways to befriend the other departments.

That is all fine but the situations that we were frequently thrown into should not be bogged down by the social graces....can you imagine?
ICU nurse; "Pardon me, so sorry, but could I trouble you to move just a little to the left so that I can get to the poor guys chest to put these paddles on? I hate to bother you but it seems his heart has stopped beating." Ummm...yea right.

So anyway there was an effort, although a very forced one, to be nicer to everyone. One day the "crabbiest" nurse of all was really on her game and as Kelly from X-ray walked through the ICU to take a chest film of one of the patients, Nurse "Crabby" decided to greet her enthusiastically AND as a bonus to use Kelly's name in the greeting. I told you...type A....they go the extra mile on everything. Here is how it went.

Nurse "Crabby": "Hey! Smelly Kelly!" Umm...she meant to say Smile Kelly. It went bad.

Kelly: Looked friendly at first then really really mad. She left.

I laughed. I laughed hard. I think I was more nervous than humored....I'm surprised we didn't have to have another training. Maybe they just gave up.