Holiday!

Tomorrow mr and I jet off to sunny Lanzarote.  It's currently 33 degrees over there; I am exstatic and mr shall just cook.  I was born to be in a hotter climate than this one.  Mr jokes I'm a little like a lizard: I need the sun to warm me up.  Apart from that, it will be lovely to have a whole week of me and mr being a normal couple.  I am currently typing this from his office on base whilst he finishes up some work.  It's just like we were back at uni again, most of our dates were spent sitting side by side in a computer room somewhere doing our work.  A little sad possibly but needs must and it works for us. 
Also tomorrow the results of the AMK and EoY1 exams are due out, so unless I can find WiFi I'm afraid I shall have to keep you in suspense over whether or not I passed.  It is a four hour flight and I anticipate going slightly nuts as the results are released just 20 minutes after we take off.  Rest assured the first thing I will be doing when we land is turning on my phone and praying for a text from Mum hopefull containing the magic word 'satisfactory'. 

Quite a few people I know have recently got their degree results, so well done to them.  I was waiting nervously for them to post their fate with everything crossed trying to summon some more cosmic good will their way.  Everyone I heard about did well, so I'm thrilled for them and hope they had fun celebrating.  I really hope the good will is extended my way, although to be honest, I'm not terribly stressed out.  I have a gut feeling everything will be all right.  Though that never worked out for me in Southampton, everything I thought went well did the opposite :-s  But, nowt to be donas was the about it now. 

After I made the decision to go back to my office job once I got back from holiday, I am now still waiting for them to confirm they actually have availability for me which is annoying.  I may have to make a call to the GP's when I'm back next week and work there after all.  As long as I'm working, I don't really mind where.  I'd kind of made up my mind about the office job and was sort of looking forward to the challenges they'd be asking me to fix.  In the last week at the GP's I spent two solid days coding diabetic retinopathy results and basic medical record stats like BMI and fixing telephone number data errors.  I spent a whole day on the front desk and telephone line and met my first patient that really, really annoyed me. 

They phoned in the morning and booked an appointment for the following week, which they were happy with.  I always sign off a call by confirming the date, day, time and Dr the appointment has been booked with, just to be clear.  A nurse from the hospital then called whilst sitting next to the patient to book an INR blood test for the same time, only she thought the appointment was tomorrow, not the next week.  She was getting really angry at me, as was the patient.  The hospital wanted to hand care over to the GP now, but we physically couldn't fit them in until the following week, we were all booked up.  The nurse was trying to say that since the INR would only take a couple of minutes, did it have to have a nurses appointment, couldn't the GP do it in their consultation.  Firstly, the patient DOESN'T HAVE AN APPOINTMENT, and telling me they do isn't going to make their name magically appear on my screen.  Secondly, no, that's not how it works.  GPs don't do INR's, nurses or HCA's do, and as we are a busy practice and the types of appointment are grouped so all the bloods and all the imms are done together, ringing me the day before an expecting an appointment is a little unreasonable.  I thought they were all fine with it, grumpy, but they understood there was nothing I could do.  That afternoon, the patient in quetion turned up at the desk 'to confirm their appointment time tomorrow.  I spoke to someone this morning'.  Nice try, it was me you spoke to, and surprise surprise we still don't have spaces since you called 2 hours ago.  They got their appointment in the end.  They came in the next day for the appointment they didn't have and made so much fuss the nurse and a GP fit them in in between patients, and were subsequently running over 30 minutes late.  It's fine for the patient, they got to be seen and to feel like they got one over on the mean receptionist keeping them from medical attention.  They didn't have to be receptionist sitting there fielding evil glares and queries about when they would be seen from the waiting patients because morning clinic over ran.  They did it again the next day, again turning up for an appointment they didn't have and again the day after because, despite being given a clean bill of health from us, they'd gone to the Emergency Department anyway that evening for the same complaint and been sent home fine.  They'd had blood tests, so came in to use the following day because they wanted to know what the blood tests had said.  Cue the GP asking me to contact the ED and find out why the patient went in and what the bloods showed.  That was fun, because obviously everyone who had been there had since gone off shift.  Did it though.  The Dr was very pleased.  The bloods were clear. 

I like to think I'm a resonable person, certainly I've had many other patients compliment me on empathy and going above and beyond for them.  This is the first that has acted like I have purposefully been difficult.  If there is an emergency, or you are a green flag patient so you have open access (generally for the really sick) I can make a space for you whenever, but just because the hospital have decided they don't want to treat you anymore and your GP can deal, or because you turn up and yell at the receptionist, don't be surprised we can't see you immediatley.  That's what Walk in Centres and ED's are for, and even there you have to wait. 

That's probably enough from me for now.  I shall go and finishing combining my bag with mr's and prepare for the horrible early start required to drive to the airport and catch the flight.  Have a great week.