A What?

At work I take calls from certain hospitals when they need some assistance with a crisis patient. They can be calling for me to send a mental health professional out to do an assessment, or they can be calling to get a precertification through insurance. The latter we call "precert" for short. The calls come from either a crisis worker or a nurse.

This night it was from a nurse. She was very pleasant, but obviously very overwhelmed. There was an enormous amount of noise in the background and she was interrupted often with questions from those around her. She was obviously a charge nurse, in my mind, with too much on her plate. I felt bad for having to ask her so many questions.

We finally got to the end and I said, "Were you needing a precert?"

"A what!?" she asked.

"A precert," I repeated.

She laughed hysterically. "I thought you said priest!"

I laughed and said, "Yeah, do you need an assessment, a precert, or a priest?"

She said, "Oh definitely a priest! And tell him to bring lots of holy water. We'll need it tonight!"

I love nurses. Especially those who can be harried and overwhelmed (ok, which RN isn't?) and still keep her niceness and her humor intact!

Chelle