Busy Working Mum

This blog is usually more about whole-family stuff, but I thought I'd make a more personal entry.

This last fortnight for me has been particularly crazy:  Craig (our chief pacemaker guy)  has left for 3+ months for back surgery.  Our other part time pacemaker person just resigned because of chronic lung problems.  Little old me is the only pacemaker employee the Royal has:  I only work 1 ½ days a week, and it takes about 1.8 full time positions to get things done.  Consequently I am now the only one on the on-call roster.  It’s a good thing I hardly went out anyway!

I am grateful to the Head of Department for organising one of the pacemaker companies to provide locum support and take over most of the operating theater responsibilities.  Even with locum support, there is an enormous amount of paperwork.  I have made a checklist for the reps so that I don’t have to tackle all the leftover paperwork myself, and found a few appropriate ways to make the process more efficient.

The boss has instructed the secretaries to look after all the appointment bookings and Medicare claim paperwork, which has cut my clinic work load significantly.  Additionally I now have a secretary coming for ½ day each week to file, photocopy, mail-out, log stock etc.  I can't believe how efficient she is.  Maybe I was slow, but then again it would be nice to just streamline the paperwork and not keep having to see patients!  She makes one trip to the photocopier with multiple files, while I was trying to do them as I went, in between patients.  I think that I’ll be able to just manage if this support continues.  I have been pulled out of the echo clinic sessions of course.

Over the last couple of years the pacing clinic has only needed me for device implants (I very rarely assisted with out patient clinics) so a lot of the clinic management and stock management stuff hasn’t been my responsibility.  I'm making a lot of notes for myself to make the processes easier.

Craig also asked me to do a lecture for him in Cambell town last week, and then I offered to cover echo as well (silly me) so I only got 4 hours sleep on Friday night trying to get my Powerpoint movie slides to work.  Not a lot of sleep over the next couple of nights and then a tummy bug Tuesday evening (vomiting between 11pm and 3 am) so I’m a little run down.  I do love teaching though, it is worth the time and effort.

Tonight (Thursday) I’m also finishing costumes for the alphabet day tomorrow at Lauderdale Primary.

Because Damien is in Turkey, Mum is my backup person when I get called in (I was in the hospital for about 9 hours on Sunday for example).

So there you have it.  The brief version of my currently stressful (but usually satisfying) work life.

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