Work, Work, Work, ?Study

"Do you like living your life at a maniacal pace?" Ha!  Obviously SSU was not going to be a nice chance to slow down.  My Practice Manager said this to me in the week as I was rushing from lectures to work.  I work as an administrator at a local GP's surgery and they must be pleased with me because I'm getting more responsibilities, more training and a pay rise, which is good.  Unfortunately I'm being thrown in the deep end some what as there are quiet a few sickness absences so since I seem to be a quick study I'm shown something once and left to do it.  Since my last post I've done a twelve hour shift which started with manning the appointment line (only my second time) for the Monday morning rush which was absolutely crazy busy but I managed it which I was so pleased with.  It ended with the late clinic and lock up where I was the only member of admin staff and there were two Doctors in and a full clinic.  The next day I was handed a pile of 41 dictations with 7 urgents to do since the girls that normally do them were off sick.  These are interesting, but involve a lot of sleuthing as the Dr's tend to say "letter to so and so" and you have to work out who that may be, what they do and how to contact them, whether it needs to go via choose and book so the patient can pick their hospital and slot if it's a speciality that it can be done for, or if you should be looking for an address for them or their secretary.  Google is a God-send!  Again the day ended with a solo shift on the front desk with the late clinic and the Dr running 30 minutes late.

I know that I'm probably saying yes to too many shifts at the surgery, and that I should be taking more breaks whilst I'm there.  But the work is so interesting, time slips by without me noticing and I'm not tired until I get home.  Equally, it's a viscous circle on the hours front.  I need to study so I can keep up to be able the knowledge to pass the tests to stay on the course. Although the work I do is related and I am learning bits whilst I'm there, it's not really the sort of knowledge that will help me at the moment.  I know my available time will get less and less as I go through the next five years, so I really need to make the most of the time I have now to work and save up so I can afford fees in the years to come.

What's not helping is the fact our SSU facilitator is off ill.  She has a different approach to everyone else, which is that she's setting us small questions to do for each session we see her, while everyone else just has an essay to write.  She told us to hang fire on the essay and not to start it yet and we'd go through some topics and discuss titles when we next see her.  She then cancelled that session because she was ill and sent us an email with some more questions to do for when we next see her which is next week, so now I don't know if she's expecting an essay or not.  I tend to be a bit of an ostrich about things I don't like and ignore them and get on with other stuff.  Since work is keeping me busy I don't want to think about essays and am happy to assume we don't need one, but I don't think life'd be that kind.

Ah well, time management - tick (sort of), multi tasking - tick, learning new skills - tick, being a responsible member of a team - tick, sleep - not really.  I'll be a Doctor yet :)