August already?
And I think I last updated in June... Whoops?
My mood has been good with the increased med, but the heat is terrible for focusing. Also of course the flooding my state was hit with. The only good thing that happened with the flooding is that it took the heat with it.
Work has been...interesting. The shift the company is wanting to move toward was initially tapped as showing light changes to non clinical team members who handle items like scheduling and registration. In the last month and a half however, I've been doing a lot of back end work to make the upcoming changes actually work in reality. And a few weeks ago my manager and I had a meeting that neither of us knew what it was about - we get to it and oh it's to talk about the training that the network had offered the schedulers, did we have any questions. My manager and I blinked -- we had received no training modules on this. We got to look at the information that was supposed to have been part of the training and it was actually all of the things I had identified and was working on with my team already. Grr.
On the plus side of that, I was able to assure everyone else that hey don't panic that you haven't seen any updates or training beyond what you're been told about -- we're already on top of this and we're more prepared than you feel we are. Some of the changes are gonna be difficult to work with since we have to be less permissive of patients than we have in the past (less oh sure move that appointment later by 15 minutes, ensuring that we are offering the correct care in the appointments that are scheduled (which means actually if someone is there for a preventative to only offer care focused on that instead of care focused on chronic health concerns) which is gonna be difficult since our providers have just in the past done whatever in appointments), but this way we'll be able to improve access for appointments in general. I mean nothing we do is gonna actually prevent anyone from complaining I know.
A huge overall feeling, though, is that it's mostly about money -- getting more patients in means more money after all. I know patients who have said as much and with good reason. If healthcare wasn't for profit then I think the advantages would be more easily seen, but no one can deny that this will be a huge revenue increase. Ugh.
I recently had my yearly review and it went well. Got the feedback I was expecting - focused on my communication. Learning to give feed back better and also that I am curt/abrupt but not in a bad way. I'm lucky enough to have a team that is neuro spicy, adjacent, or familiar with so they understand how I communicate, but all of them can see that I am improving. It feels still like learning a new language and it's super weird, but if it helps okay. My manager is waiting to get approval from hers to give me the succeed mark. Nearly all of the time people get either 'meets' or 'doesn't meet'; I'm just out pacing I guess. It helps that I am in a work environment where I feel safe and which is also encouraging and healthy. It also clears me for the yearly 2% increase in pay which is better than nothing.
Sister did not get a job with my company, but has gotten one at a Burger King. She is an assistance store manager and likely on track to become assistant area manager which would be more of the office work that she wanted so it works out. She is making more than me which is something strange all things considered, but at least it's income for the shared house. It's already been a benefit overall so win-win. For some reason, some of her training has to happen in another state which is confusing for everyone, but they're paying for her hotel room while she's out there working and she gets a food stipend. It hasn't changed anything much for me -- it's just another cat I'm looking out for and the cat is easy to care for, nothing special to her. (The cats aren't getting along, but they can at least be in the same room together so that's something.)
When my sister is freed of the out of state training, she'll be working 10 to 12 hour days five days a week so really nothing different for me to deal with. And she'll likely be working both weekend days. It works out for her that I like to clean the house and do laundry and her cat likes me -- she puts her laundry in my car so I can bring it with me when I do mine and cleaning house isn't a big deal for me. In trade, she usually buys me some groceries or take out. We've kept up communicating about what we both need and how to best say where the other could help shore the other up, but so far knock on wood we're making it work. I think it'll be hard with us still in a 1 bedroom since we haven't found anything, but we both work full time so for now it'll be fine.
We are still looking for a two or even three bedroom since we can afford it together, but so far nothing and now with the flooding, we're even less sure of finding a place. I've asked my landlord for a 6 month lease instead of a 12 and they're agreed to it. If need be, we will do month to month after 6 months. Glad to have these land lords.
We made it through the recent flooding okay. I was at work when the river started rising badly and since it was right next to our parking lot, it was...interesting. About 2 is when I saw that most of the roads out of town were only a few hours away from being submerged so I left then with permission from my manager. Several others did as well since they also lived out of town. Appointments the next morning were cancelled altogether and the afternoon to be determined. I managed to get home the usual way, but someone that lives near me had to go up and around because within two hours, the road was flooded. I don't know how long it took Montpelier to flood, but I don't think it took that long either.
By bedtime that night, we had made the decision to cancel the next day entirely; the providers have remote access to our network, but I don't. Luckily where I live there is a clinic within our network and I could get there so I worked out of their office to do call outs to patients and switch the next morning's to zoom and provide support to the providers. We couldn't get out of town to Montpelier, though, because roads were closed because of the damage. But, the next day, we got clearance to go back to our office since it had a bank protecting it from the river and so the building didn't get flooded, yay. But for two weeks straight, there was a lot of rerouting of traffic. There is a section of the town I live in that isn't really passable even though it's open to traffic -- they reopened it but didn't repair the road that got torn up with the flooding so it will tear up the suspension on vehicles. Why they didn't just keep the road closed until they could repair it entirely is beyond anyone's comprehension.
We did see an uptick in the first 10 days or so of post flooding of people with GI complaints because yes people were going out into the flood waters like it was clean water. We also had boil water notices for a good week straight which was a huge learning curve when it came to dishes and cleaning, but likely added to everyone's GI distress.
My company gave everyone who worked that first day post flood a $150 bonus which helped me get through to the next pay check and they also provided us with bottled water during the boil water notice and also gave us free lunch one day. (Honestly in my opinion it wasn't enough; we should have been closed for a week for anything except acute and given everyone a week's pay for it because of the clean up.) I took a half day later that week to get some errands and such done because we were expecting another day of heavy rain and I worried (everyone worried) that we would not only get flooded again, but worse since everything was still precarious and not cleaned up. Everything is indeed mostly cleared up, but there are still road closures and spots where we can see the landslides.
Luckily, the first pay check after the flood included a $3200 bonus from some state or federal fund for having worked through the official pandemic status; my work place had jumped onto that for their workers which was needed for a lot of people I think. For me, even though I didn't have any flood damage except mental, it helped me to get back even with the bills and I had enough still to put aside for savings. I splurged a bit on a few not needed items, but I think that was fair enough all things considered.
This week has been pretty mild with the pollen and also the air quality (if it wasn't forest fire smoke we were dealing with, it was all the ick thrown up by the flooding and the clean up) so today I went to the trails for the first time in a month. Other than being very, very wet (because it is still raining and raining and raining), it looks the same. I was worried since the trails are where the quarries used to be and so there are ton of loose cut stone about half the size of a station wagon, but it looks good. And the weather was cool enough that I enjoyed myself.
So how's everyone?
My mood has been good with the increased med, but the heat is terrible for focusing. Also of course the flooding my state was hit with. The only good thing that happened with the flooding is that it took the heat with it.
Work has been...interesting. The shift the company is wanting to move toward was initially tapped as showing light changes to non clinical team members who handle items like scheduling and registration. In the last month and a half however, I've been doing a lot of back end work to make the upcoming changes actually work in reality. And a few weeks ago my manager and I had a meeting that neither of us knew what it was about - we get to it and oh it's to talk about the training that the network had offered the schedulers, did we have any questions. My manager and I blinked -- we had received no training modules on this. We got to look at the information that was supposed to have been part of the training and it was actually all of the things I had identified and was working on with my team already. Grr.
On the plus side of that, I was able to assure everyone else that hey don't panic that you haven't seen any updates or training beyond what you're been told about -- we're already on top of this and we're more prepared than you feel we are. Some of the changes are gonna be difficult to work with since we have to be less permissive of patients than we have in the past (less oh sure move that appointment later by 15 minutes, ensuring that we are offering the correct care in the appointments that are scheduled (which means actually if someone is there for a preventative to only offer care focused on that instead of care focused on chronic health concerns) which is gonna be difficult since our providers have just in the past done whatever in appointments), but this way we'll be able to improve access for appointments in general. I mean nothing we do is gonna actually prevent anyone from complaining I know.
A huge overall feeling, though, is that it's mostly about money -- getting more patients in means more money after all. I know patients who have said as much and with good reason. If healthcare wasn't for profit then I think the advantages would be more easily seen, but no one can deny that this will be a huge revenue increase. Ugh.
I recently had my yearly review and it went well. Got the feedback I was expecting - focused on my communication. Learning to give feed back better and also that I am curt/abrupt but not in a bad way. I'm lucky enough to have a team that is neuro spicy, adjacent, or familiar with so they understand how I communicate, but all of them can see that I am improving. It feels still like learning a new language and it's super weird, but if it helps okay. My manager is waiting to get approval from hers to give me the succeed mark. Nearly all of the time people get either 'meets' or 'doesn't meet'; I'm just out pacing I guess. It helps that I am in a work environment where I feel safe and which is also encouraging and healthy. It also clears me for the yearly 2% increase in pay which is better than nothing.
Sister did not get a job with my company, but has gotten one at a Burger King. She is an assistance store manager and likely on track to become assistant area manager which would be more of the office work that she wanted so it works out. She is making more than me which is something strange all things considered, but at least it's income for the shared house. It's already been a benefit overall so win-win. For some reason, some of her training has to happen in another state which is confusing for everyone, but they're paying for her hotel room while she's out there working and she gets a food stipend. It hasn't changed anything much for me -- it's just another cat I'm looking out for and the cat is easy to care for, nothing special to her. (The cats aren't getting along, but they can at least be in the same room together so that's something.)
When my sister is freed of the out of state training, she'll be working 10 to 12 hour days five days a week so really nothing different for me to deal with. And she'll likely be working both weekend days. It works out for her that I like to clean the house and do laundry and her cat likes me -- she puts her laundry in my car so I can bring it with me when I do mine and cleaning house isn't a big deal for me. In trade, she usually buys me some groceries or take out. We've kept up communicating about what we both need and how to best say where the other could help shore the other up, but so far knock on wood we're making it work. I think it'll be hard with us still in a 1 bedroom since we haven't found anything, but we both work full time so for now it'll be fine.
We are still looking for a two or even three bedroom since we can afford it together, but so far nothing and now with the flooding, we're even less sure of finding a place. I've asked my landlord for a 6 month lease instead of a 12 and they're agreed to it. If need be, we will do month to month after 6 months. Glad to have these land lords.
We made it through the recent flooding okay. I was at work when the river started rising badly and since it was right next to our parking lot, it was...interesting. About 2 is when I saw that most of the roads out of town were only a few hours away from being submerged so I left then with permission from my manager. Several others did as well since they also lived out of town. Appointments the next morning were cancelled altogether and the afternoon to be determined. I managed to get home the usual way, but someone that lives near me had to go up and around because within two hours, the road was flooded. I don't know how long it took Montpelier to flood, but I don't think it took that long either.
By bedtime that night, we had made the decision to cancel the next day entirely; the providers have remote access to our network, but I don't. Luckily where I live there is a clinic within our network and I could get there so I worked out of their office to do call outs to patients and switch the next morning's to zoom and provide support to the providers. We couldn't get out of town to Montpelier, though, because roads were closed because of the damage. But, the next day, we got clearance to go back to our office since it had a bank protecting it from the river and so the building didn't get flooded, yay. But for two weeks straight, there was a lot of rerouting of traffic. There is a section of the town I live in that isn't really passable even though it's open to traffic -- they reopened it but didn't repair the road that got torn up with the flooding so it will tear up the suspension on vehicles. Why they didn't just keep the road closed until they could repair it entirely is beyond anyone's comprehension.
We did see an uptick in the first 10 days or so of post flooding of people with GI complaints because yes people were going out into the flood waters like it was clean water. We also had boil water notices for a good week straight which was a huge learning curve when it came to dishes and cleaning, but likely added to everyone's GI distress.
My company gave everyone who worked that first day post flood a $150 bonus which helped me get through to the next pay check and they also provided us with bottled water during the boil water notice and also gave us free lunch one day. (Honestly in my opinion it wasn't enough; we should have been closed for a week for anything except acute and given everyone a week's pay for it because of the clean up.) I took a half day later that week to get some errands and such done because we were expecting another day of heavy rain and I worried (everyone worried) that we would not only get flooded again, but worse since everything was still precarious and not cleaned up. Everything is indeed mostly cleared up, but there are still road closures and spots where we can see the landslides.
Luckily, the first pay check after the flood included a $3200 bonus from some state or federal fund for having worked through the official pandemic status; my work place had jumped onto that for their workers which was needed for a lot of people I think. For me, even though I didn't have any flood damage except mental, it helped me to get back even with the bills and I had enough still to put aside for savings. I splurged a bit on a few not needed items, but I think that was fair enough all things considered.
This week has been pretty mild with the pollen and also the air quality (if it wasn't forest fire smoke we were dealing with, it was all the ick thrown up by the flooding and the clean up) so today I went to the trails for the first time in a month. Other than being very, very wet (because it is still raining and raining and raining), it looks the same. I was worried since the trails are where the quarries used to be and so there are ton of loose cut stone about half the size of a station wagon, but it looks good. And the weather was cool enough that I enjoyed myself.
So how's everyone?