What I Do When I’m Not Twittering

And so begins another work week.

I’m looking forward to getting back to work today. The weekend with Boo has nearly driven me insane. Four days of almost non-stop rain has turned my active, outdoors loving child into a Monster (yes, that’s Monster with a capital, bolded M)!

I actually quite like my job even when I’m insanely busy, and chasing my tale to meet deadlines. This month is one of those insanely busy times for me, being end of my reporting year, end of my reporting quarter, end of a reporting third! For each little task I complete, I get a little leap of joy in my chest (sad, I know). Even though I know for each task that is reported, there is a clean slate and the cycle begins again.

Oh you don’t know what I do?

I do stuff! I have absolutely no idea how to explain what I do. In theory, my job is to make hospitals safer. That is – safer for patients.

Did you know that a whopping 10% of patients suffer harm in hospital as a result of human error? Yes, you can go and Google that.

Like What?

• we might share some nasty germs with you, germs you didn’t bring in with you
• we might make you sick (or worse) by giving you the wrong medication, the wrong dose, or something that doesn’t agree with you
• we might inadvertently cause that deep vein thrombosis in your leg that travels to your chest and/or brain and…
• we might do the wrong operation
• we might even leave some of our equipment behind when we sew you up
• we might make you so sick, we might even accidently kill you

Being that I work in a hospital, and I may on occasions get my hands dirty doing some midwifery type skills (albeit very rarely these days), I count myself in the ‘WE.’

I work on ways to reduce human error in healthcare. For every little improvement, I feel triumphant, especially when there are things I have spent years beating my head on a brick wall over.

I get to investigate some interesting cases when things go wrong.

I get astounded by some of the things people (health care workers) do… because I certainly was the perfect nurse and midwife!!!

I still get to see newborns (and cuddle them) every day too

What I dislike about my job is meetings. Endless, time consuming meetings. You know,  last week I achieved fairly much nothing in my 3 days at work except attend meetings.

I also dislike when I have to put on my extra-thick skin. People hate change, and I’m the implementer of change. Oh and of course people think I should be using my clinical skills in this climate of nursing/midwifery shortages, and will quite happily share that with me on a daily basis.

The next 3 days are going to be horrendously busy to ensure I meet my deadlines by the end of the month… but hey I have no meetings scheduled and I’m up for the challenge.

I’m guessing you probably still have no idea what I do – never makes any sense to anyone!