Doing the right thing

My job deals with helping people. I work in health care. Test results are a big deal. Heck, just giving out a warm blanket can be a big deal. Not only is patient care super important but following through on things is even more so. I mean think about it. You are sick, scared, possibly in pain and waiting. You wait and get harassed by lab techs drawing blood, possibly respiratory techs checking your breathing, nurses checking vitals and x-ray techs taking pictures. No one really tells you much of what is going on with you but your doctor. Then he/she has to wait for others to give him/her results from all the tests that have been run. So you are sick, unable to rest, and awaiting answers. That is why following through is such a big deal. It can cause a big chink in the chain if someone fails to follow through. Someone failed recently, and unfortunately I had to report it. HAD to. I tried to find a way out of it. I really like my co-workers. I felt horrible. I really, really didn't want to. I did everything I could to avoid it. Having to call it in made me sick to my stomach. This person is a good tech, excellent even. One that I would never expect to fail. The patient wasn't harmed because of the incident, but it still was a big deal. This incident bothered me my entire shift and I have thought of it often this week. I know how it is to have an off day. I once failed also,the patient wasn't harmed because of my fail. That fail cost me my job. My job loss led to my family being unable to afford our bills. We lost a car and our house. We tried really hard to keep these things. My husband worked as much as he could. I worked at any job in my field that would hire me. Before we lost our home I was working three jobs, whenever they needed me. I worked up to 12 hour shifts and worked 21 days straight. By that point it was too late. We were too far behind, bankruptcy would save our house and cars, but I was also expecting a baby. We would BARELY have afforded it all. We had to leave everything we worked so hard for behind. We didn't have lots of credit card debt, we aren't fans of those, maybe $3000.00 if that. So we didn't loose things because we were frivolous. We stayed a float from our savings for 11 months. Then we were back at square one. We are fine, we made it through it. It all started from one fail in the health care system though. I often hear people say how they will have someones job because of a fail. I no longer say that. I know what a single job loss can mean in society today. I don't know, or even think that is what happened due to my report, but the idea that it is even a possibility makes my stomach turn. You know what else makes me feel ill, what if the patient had been affected? What if they took a turn for the worse because of it? What if that patient was someone I love? I did the right thing, the difficult thing, what I would expect of my health care provider. It sucked.