Les Incompètents is a band which I am unfamiliar with, but it is also an expression that means “the incompetents,” or those people who do not know what they are doing.  Today I happened to see a fair amount of incompetence when I visited my grandfather in the hospital.

My maternal grandfather is currently in the hospital for the third time within a month due to blood clots from a still unknown cause.  The first time he went to the hospital they put him on blood thinners and sent him home.  The second time they did a minor surgery where they put a net in his body to protect his vital organs from traveling clots and then they sent him home again after clean blood tests and an x-ray.  The third time they did a cat scan.

That is not the extent of the incompetence, however.  Yesterday evening there was a screw-up with the meals, as my grandfather (like most of my family) does not eat any pork, and there was pork with what the hospital staff brought.  Then they put my grampa on a fasting diet because they were going to run some tests this morning–only the doctor doing the tests left after one hour and they had scheduled him for the wrong tests thinking (somehow) that he had problems swallowing and chocking, when he was in therefore completely unrelated issues.  Finally, at about 11:15AM or so they brought him some breakfast so he could drink some (decaff) coffee (as he is on a “cardiac” diet) and eat something before lunch.

I’m not impressed with what I saw–the staff appears very nice, but somewhere along the line the wrong information is getting posted, and acted on (or not) and the quality control that should be present is simply not there.  Earlier in his stay he had received a nicotine patch that belonged to someone else and had someone come into his room with anti-smoking materials (and my grandfather does not smoke).  Why doesn’t someone get their act together?

Feel free to share your own personal stories as well.