the inadequacies of job descriptions

At the beginning of his popular presentation for TED, Barry Schwartz outlines the job requirements of a hospital janitor. He points out that none of these requirements mention anything that involves other human beings, yet when janitors were interviewed by psychologists, much of their work involved human interactions and a degree of improvisation and 'practical wisdom'.

I was interested in the job requirements of hospital technicians who may be dealing with pneumatic tubes, and came across these job advertisements for a lab tech at Ochsner Health System and a diagnostic scheduling technician at St Luke’s Health System:

Lab Tech: Gross Room, Ochsner Health System

Duties: Accessions surgical cases, biopsies and autopsy specimens from various departments, and clients via Central Specimen Receiving (CSR), the train, pneumatic tube or courier. Verifies patient’s demographics, accessions patient information and test requested in Laboratory Computer. Accurately labels specimen containers tissue cassettes with assigned number. Assist Pathologist and residents in the gross dissection room. Maintains record of Gross Room workload and data entry. Records all specimen errors or discrepancies. Performs staining, autopsy specimen procurement under direct supervision by a Pathologist, Pathologist Assistant or Histopathology Supervisor. Demonstrates actions consistent with Ochsner Expectations as duties are performed on a daily basis.

Diagnostic Scheduling Technician, St. Luke's Health System

Duties: 7. Operates medical center equipment such as computers and software, phone systems, paging systems, intercoms, fax machines, copy machines, pneumatic tube system, and printers in order to perform the duties of the job. Accept change in a positive and professional manner while willingly learning unfamiliar tasks.

Whilst the job descriptions do mention work with other people (I have only included a section of the second job description), they do not explicitly describe the work that I am interested in: the adjustments, the ‘repair work’, the tinkering that technicians perform to get their work done. There are hints of this buried in words such as ‘record discrepancies’, ‘accept change’, ‘learn unfamiliar tasks’, however so much is left out. Although when does a job description ever really describe a job?

more tubes on the tube

I spent a little time, one evening, not so long ago, watching more YouTube clips about pneumatic tubes. I thought I'd share a few for those who might also want to while away some time in the rumbling whoosh of a few pneumatic tube systems.

Winner of the best catch-phrase went to Quick Tube System for their “If we can lift it, we can land it … and we can land it soft” film clip. The sequel proves it by landing a capsule on an egg. There are a few promotional videos, here and here, and several computer animated models, including this rather mesmerising one with a groovy soundtrack. There is a glass tube trip and an interview with Stanford Hospital’s Chief Engineer, Leander Robinson, who plants a videocamera into a capsule during the video. For a few seconds there is a wonderful split screen capture of the inside and outside of the tube, and then a tracking of the capsule simultaneously on a computer screen. Finally, who would have thought that there would be a film noir made about pneumatic tubes? Below is the film clip for “Through a tube darkly” produced in association with St Olav’s Hospital and Swisslog.

pneumatics on the tube

It was only last year that I realised what pneumatic tube systems were. Throughout my fieldwork in 2007, in a hospital in outer-metropolitan Melbourne, I had been fascinated by these capsules and stations built into the ward walls. I made numerous comments about the system throughout my fieldnotes but didn't ever really ask anyone too much about them. The tubes were in my periphery. It wasn't until I was watching Baiser Voles (Stolen Kisses), that I made sense of the capsules and their transportation. This YouTube video from the movie, of the pneumatic system in Paris is lovely to watch on its own.

Pneumatics appear elsewhere on the tube. Alongside a number of promotional videos, there is Molly Wright Steenson's exhaustingly speedy presentation on pneumatic tube systems (her slogan is from Ted Stevens, "it really is a series of tubes"), for the Ignite channel (which seems to be a quick version of TED).

As I was searching YouTube, the video I was most looking forward to was the tour of the pneumatic system under construction at St Elizabeth East Hospital (Lafayette, Indiana) by foreman Brent Clark. Whilst there are few shots of the tube system, it is a nice glimpse of a hospital network under construction. It would be fantastic to similarly enter a hospital under construction, and talk to those who build the tubes into place.

My favourite video was called Pneumatic Tube Transfer eller Rörpost which shows the four minute journey of a camera through a pneumatic network. This 'inner space' voyage takes us on a bumpy ride with some wonderful blurry images and sounds and a delightful pause mid-way. It is a fantastic way to capture some of the life of the pneumatic tube. Are there any great videos that I have missed?