Storytime: a patient came into my unit with a controlled medication (I don’t remember what maybe oxy? Ativan?). Per policy, I was waiting for the pharmacy tech to come up, verify my count, and take it down to their safe. It might take a minute, so I got my count done and left the medication in its destined serial-numbered bag, visible on camera on the counter in the med room.

When I count pills, I fold a clean sheet of printer paper into a tray, with the sides folded up into lips. The four corners make little diagonal ears. I sort the pills into piles of five with a clean spoon to make them easier to count, then use one of those diagonal ears to funnel them back into the bottle. I got somewhere in the 50–100 range.

The pharmacy tech comes up. She has a specialized tray (they usually look something like this) with a cylindrical, prescription-bottle-sized funnel that snaps down over one side, and some other carefully designed features to facilitate this exact task. The equipment itself was interesting but not the really cool bit.

She pours the bottle out onto this specialized tray, but she doesn’t need to group the pills. She literally just eyeballs the 50–100 random splatter of pills that falls out onto her flat tray and immediately calls out my exact, carefully tallied count (which I had not yet told her).

She then, in one fluid motion, tips the tray just enough to slide them all down into the funnel side, slaps the funnel closed over them, and tips whole tray up and down so the contents of the funnel fall down into the bottle. We complete the sign-off and seal the bottle in its security envelope.

I’m frequently reminded that nurses are kind of the Swiss Army knives of the healthcare system. I can do 90% of the ancillary staff’s jobs in a pinch, but it’s WILD to watch the fluidity with which each of those tasks is done by someone who does that one specific task all day long.

What’s a super-specialized skill or talent you’ve seen that completely impressed you?