I cried at work and feel embarrassed

Hey everybody,

For context, I’m a back office medical assistant at a clinic and have been for a year. We’ve been super understaffed lately so the past couple of weeks a few of us have needed to double up on providers. Between rooming, procedures, computer work, etc it’s been really stressful, and as a Spanish speaker I also am given more work.

Anyways, yesterday one of my providers (let’s call her provider A) ran late due to a few complications with a patient. Those in the medical field know this isn’t a fault of the medical assistant or the provider, but can happen when patients are scheduled for a shorter time slot than necessary, or when patients bring up more issues than expected. So I went and told the provider’s next patient (ten minutes after that appt was supposed to start) that we were behind and waiting on a room but should be ready shortly. She seemed on edge bc of other appts she had scheduled but she said her first commitment wasn’t for another two hours. I offered her some water and went back and had to take care of some orders from provider B as my other coworkers were busy. Then when provider A was done with the first patient, I quickly cleaned the room and went to the lobby to pick up the second patient, but she was already speaking to our receptionists and snapped at me for making her wait 25 minutes, and said we were just going to rush her appt now. We ended up offering her a spot next week but I was so angry because I tried to communicate what was going on but even that wasn’t good enough. If I was an isolated incident I don’t think I would have cared as much, but on top of everything else I think it all just boiled over so I cried in front of everybody 😍😍

My coworkers and my providers were supportive about it but I feel so unprofessional and weak after it all. It’s certainly not my first time dealing with rude people but I hate that it got to me at all. I did speak with my manager about how I’ve been feeling and we coordinated a few solutions but unfortunately we are going to remain understaffed for a while bc of some issues with hiring. Part of me was wondering if the sensitivity is also an ADHD thing and how to best manage it going forward. I love working in medicine but clearly I need to fix some things.