My Work Life

Hmm, what to blog about today..... After yesterday's spill all my guts out blog, don't really have much to blog about, except work I guess. It seems to just get busier and busier. Our phones are ringing off the hook. I mean, I know there's 300 new diagnoses of Diabetes in Alberta every week, but they don't ALL have to come to my clinic, do they? I work at the Diabetes, Hypertension and Cholesterol Centre in the Calgary Health Region, and we book for a number of clinics under that umbrella title. We have the Diabetes Education Centre, the Hypertension and Cholesterol Centre, the Vascular Risk Reduction Clinic, and the Weight Management Clinic. The Weight Management clinic isn't really just for everybody who wants to lose weight, but is more specifically geared towards people who have a BMI over 40 and have at least 1 or 2 co-morbidities. The patients who are selected to participate in the program are prepared for the Laparoscopic Banding Surgery which is NOT a solution, but a tool to help them lose weight. (an awful lot of our patients get that mixed up) What they do in the surgery is laparoscopically they go into the abdomen, and place a band around the stomach (as opposed to cutting out or stapling any portion of the said organ) When their stomach stretches the band (which it is bound to from time to time) they go to their Surgeon for "fills" where they fill the sides of the band with Saline to keep it tighter around the stomach. It's really a fascinating process. I'd love to see one done, but I am not that lucky, just a lowly clerk. But, lowly clerks are important too. I really need to stop using the word "just" when referring to myself. Lets, see, yep that's all of the clinics I book for in our mass conglomerate clinic. Really we have a great staff who know their stuff, and contribute to the team. I love where I work really. When I came on, it was a little difficult adjusting, as I had just come from acute care, and not just any - Urologic Surgery. (which I have some really interesting stories about, and when I'm not in a public setting such as this, you should really pull me aside and ask me some of them - if you're not squeamish about such things that is) So, acute care was pretty intense - as it is anywhere in the province of Alberta. (our HC system is pretty screwed up in my opinion, the Government puts a tiny bit of money into it, and *poof* it's gone like it was dust or something) My stress level dropped considerably coming to an Outpatient clinic. It's starting to get more stressful though, as we're planning to change sites, and seemingly get busier and busier. Plus, everybody keeps bringing me projects saying things like... "oh, it doesn't need to be done today, you can get to it whenever you have spare time." Well lately, there is no spare time, so those projects pretty much sit on my shelf until the person comes back and says - "Did you get my project done?" and I say "Nope, didn't have any time to get to it." Meh, whatever. The main thing is, we're busy, and we're happy, and we have great staff, and that makes all the difference in any workplace.