Job Satisfaction
Jan. 6th, 2005 01:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thessalianSome day in the not too distant future, I have got to get out of the NHS. Fighting the losing battle against laziness, incompetence, rudeness and apathy to ensure patients actually get care is really beginning to get to me.
When a patient goes to clinic and the doctor says that the patient needs to be seen again in a month, it's the clinic receptionist's job to book the patient in for that repeat appointment. So when the patient was last seen in October, and January rolls around and a palliative care nurse informs the hapless admin that the patient has received no appointment, it's simply not on. So the hapless admin (me, in case you hadn't guessed) has to do it. So I do that, I book transport, all's generally well, but the fact is that the patient should have been seen in November, for God's sake, and now the appointment I could get for the poor man is in mid-freaking-January and I feel bad even though it's not my fault and the palliative care nurse was really nice.
What the hell do the clinic receptionists do out there, anyway? I know they don't answer the phones, because one of them told me that "it's too crazy to allow us time to answer the phones". So they don't get to hear little things like the fact that patients are trying to cancel, and the patients get logged as Did Not Attend, and after three of those, we stop sending them appointments and no wonder people are disillusioned about the NHS. I know they don't call the individual patients into clinic because I've seen the nurses do that. They need to be on hand in case a consultant needs some results that aren't on file, but I know that I in particular am really good about making sure that the appropriate results and notes get to the clinic preppers before clinic, so that shouldn't be too hard a task. So beyond greeting the patients as they come in, dealing with their queries and telling them where to sit, I'm not seeing little things like booking repeat appointments and taking phone calls, both items being part of their job description, as overly heinous tasks. And yet.
Patients are rude. Consultants demand the impossible. Everyone from registrars on down either can't or won't do their jobs properly. Temps think it's perfectly acceptable to swan in at half past fucking eleven without even a heads up to let people know where they are and if they're coming. (Though, credit to her, she cleared Monica's backlog of ward documentation and that's a feat; baby's got time management problems, but she can type.) Every so often, faced with all this, I have to turn around and ask myself, why do I keep doing this to myself? Why don't I find something better -- something that pays more, has somewhat less stress (people's lives not being on the line) and generally does more for my well-being and job satisfaction?
A lot of it comes down to, "What else is there?" As odd as it seems to me half the time, I'm a specialist -- a skilled and experienced medical secretary. Going somewhere else is a waste of my skills. Besides, there is an obvious shortage of skilled people with an actual work ethic in this organisation. I suppose they need all the me-types they can get. At the end of the day, though, it all comes down to what I can actually handle. I'm maintaining at the minute, but I'm not sure if this is the thing for me. On the other hand, I don't know what the thing for me is, and I'm not qualified to do much else.
Blegh. Depressing. I'm sure it's just first-week-back blues.
When a patient goes to clinic and the doctor says that the patient needs to be seen again in a month, it's the clinic receptionist's job to book the patient in for that repeat appointment. So when the patient was last seen in October, and January rolls around and a palliative care nurse informs the hapless admin that the patient has received no appointment, it's simply not on. So the hapless admin (me, in case you hadn't guessed) has to do it. So I do that, I book transport, all's generally well, but the fact is that the patient should have been seen in November, for God's sake, and now the appointment I could get for the poor man is in mid-freaking-January and I feel bad even though it's not my fault and the palliative care nurse was really nice.
What the hell do the clinic receptionists do out there, anyway? I know they don't answer the phones, because one of them told me that "it's too crazy to allow us time to answer the phones". So they don't get to hear little things like the fact that patients are trying to cancel, and the patients get logged as Did Not Attend, and after three of those, we stop sending them appointments and no wonder people are disillusioned about the NHS. I know they don't call the individual patients into clinic because I've seen the nurses do that. They need to be on hand in case a consultant needs some results that aren't on file, but I know that I in particular am really good about making sure that the appropriate results and notes get to the clinic preppers before clinic, so that shouldn't be too hard a task. So beyond greeting the patients as they come in, dealing with their queries and telling them where to sit, I'm not seeing little things like booking repeat appointments and taking phone calls, both items being part of their job description, as overly heinous tasks. And yet.
Patients are rude. Consultants demand the impossible. Everyone from registrars on down either can't or won't do their jobs properly. Temps think it's perfectly acceptable to swan in at half past fucking eleven without even a heads up to let people know where they are and if they're coming. (Though, credit to her, she cleared Monica's backlog of ward documentation and that's a feat; baby's got time management problems, but she can type.) Every so often, faced with all this, I have to turn around and ask myself, why do I keep doing this to myself? Why don't I find something better -- something that pays more, has somewhat less stress (people's lives not being on the line) and generally does more for my well-being and job satisfaction?
A lot of it comes down to, "What else is there?" As odd as it seems to me half the time, I'm a specialist -- a skilled and experienced medical secretary. Going somewhere else is a waste of my skills. Besides, there is an obvious shortage of skilled people with an actual work ethic in this organisation. I suppose they need all the me-types they can get. At the end of the day, though, it all comes down to what I can actually handle. I'm maintaining at the minute, but I'm not sure if this is the thing for me. On the other hand, I don't know what the thing for me is, and I'm not qualified to do much else.
Blegh. Depressing. I'm sure it's just first-week-back blues.
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-06 02:40 pm (UTC)Cos I'd imagine that'd pay you better, it being not gub'ment to begin with...
no subject
Date: 2005-01-06 07:34 pm (UTC)I do think there is something in this first-week-back blues thing, however.
I don't suppose this is helping very much. Sorry. I hope things improve for you soon.