Brain Cramps

The worst is behind me. I survived my first week at my new job and things can only go uphill from here. By the end of the fifth day my brain was ready to burst from all the new information that had been hurled at it. The sweet thought of a day off was truly a salve for my soul.

It's always been a bad habit of mine to expect too much too soon, especially of myself. I expect to know everything right away and tend to get cross and frustrated with myself when, of course, I don't. But I'm a mature adult now, right? This time around I'm trying to be kinder to myself. Therefore, I decided that if I learned and remembered at least two things, at best four, each day then this would be acceptable. As usual all was a mishmash of information the first three days. By the fourth day a few lightbulbs went on above my head and the blur of information began to fall into place and make some sense.

My previous jobs in health care have carried with them the responsibilities of hands-on care of seniors, watching out for their welfare and safety, alerting nurses of change of conditions and such. My new job requires a different kind of responsibility that is completely new to me. I now work in the outpatient department of a Life Care retirement community serving people 65 years of age and older. The buildings are spread out on a 29-acre campus and are home to approximately 300 people. This is a senior living center which encompasses independent, assisted and skilled nursing care. Some of these people, while still able to live independently within the confines of the campus, need assistance with dispensing and monitoring of their daily medications.

My main task in the morning is to give medications to those residents who stop by the clinic to receive them. Some of these people also need assistance with eye drops or help with ted-hose (very tight compression stockings) which are extremely difficult to put on. Fear not! The clinic hasn't left me with a big bucket of pills, expecting me to dig in to find the right medications for the right resident. All medications are contained in sealed packets for each individual. The resident's name, time meds are to be taken, the doctor's name, name and quantity of the pills are clearly marked on the outside of the packet. It's up to me to carefully check the name, time medication is to be given and ensure that the resident swallows them. I have to stand by and watch them take their pills then and there. It's no easy task to stay close and observe while trying to seem unobtrusive at the same time.

After the residents who visit the clinic have come and gone, I head out to the cottages, apartments or single units of those residents who need assistance with their meds but don't come to the clinic to receive them. This part of the morning takes a great deal of time and entails a lot of walking. The little homes I must visit each morning are spread out all over so I'm up, down and all around the place. The first few days I wondered how I'd ever find my way around despite the map I was given. I thought back to my very first day of high school when I couldn't find my locker and my very kind big brother took me back that same day to help me find it. That was child's play in comparison to this! However, the nice young woman who's been orienting me shadowed me on my outside med pass on my fifth day and I didn't make too many mistakes finding those places to which I needed to go.

Once I've completed my med pass and return to the clinic, there are forms to fill out, forms to file in residents' charts and there are specific places within each chart where the paperwork should go depending upon its content. For one who has never worked in a medical office before, this is a challenge but I know I'll rise and conquer it. Throughout the remainder of the day I may be asked to assist with taking vitals, set up a resident in one of the examining rooms, get sent out to assist a resident who needs help with something or other, check a resident's home whose phone has been reported "off the hook" and assist with bathing a resident who isn't quite safe enough to do this alone. For such a huge campus, there is a very interesting method used to account for each resident on a daily basis. On the upper left-hand corner of each resident's door there is a small latch. All residents are required to open their front door when they first get up in the morning to release the latch to a hanging down position. Starting around 9:30 am Security travels throughout the entire campus and makes a note of which latches are still up and reports this information to the front desk. This information is then reported to the outpatient clinic and I must go to each one to check to make sure everything is okay. More often than not the latch is down when I get there inwhich case I don't have to do anything but report back to the front desk that everything's fine. Very often a resident will have opened their door soon after the security person has passed by. If the latch is still up I have a master key to access the home if no one responds to the doorbell. It's a pretty nifty system for such a huge place but, again, it sends me hither and yon throughout the day.

Enough for now and probably too much. I expect to get into and remain in excellent shape with this job. One more thing; I have a most unusual job title. I am the "runner". Can you guess why?

 

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