Commendation letter

Nurses deal with a lot of people who end up in the hospital for reasons less related to injury than to ongoing mental disease. Sometimes, this can really ruin a shift. Sometimes, it can make your day. And sometimes, you're just left scratching your head.

I got a commendation letter from one of my patients. It wasn't for me, per se. It was for my whole clinic. It was five pages long, written in barely intelligible capital letters, and had my name at the top.

The letter outlined that he thought we were the best clinic ever and some reasons why that included the downfall of health care under Obama, his aborted interview with Barbara Walters, and the federal offenses committed by the health care system I work for. It also included some shout outs to people for reasons I don't completely understand and a history of his health care that also seemed to include a history of some sort of police investigation.

Normally, when I get thank-you letters, I make sure to pass the information on to the people who were involved. When I get letters of complaint, I make sure to notify risk management and any other departments that need to know. Although this letter was labeled as a commendation letter, I'm not entirely sure which category this falls under. So, I took it to my boss.

"What do I do with this?"

"Don't you have a file for these?"

Okay, I guess I haven't been a manager long enough and it really shows. I'm thinking, "I have a file for letters from patients, but this seems to fall outside of that file somehow."

I told her that the letter was addressed to me, but also technically to her. She said, "okay, you've shown me the letter, now go put it in the file."

I keep bothering this poor woman who is my boss. Why do I keep doing that? I think at the moment, with what is going on in my life, I just can't sort out what is important and what isn't. Hopefully, I won't be writing my own letters soon.