20 Aug 2010
Posted in Work at 2:12 pm by alby
GP referral from this morning:
Thank you for seeing this lady. Unfortunately I haven’t made a note of the reason for my referral so profuse apologies but I wonder if you would be willing to see her on a routine basis.
I have tried to ring her this evening but her phone is switched off and unfortunately I am about to go on holiday.
I will try and get some more information about the referral when I return if she hasn’t been seen. If you would put her on the waiting list, that would be great though.”
Wow.
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18 Aug 2010
Posted in Rants, Work at 4:28 pm by alby
At work we occasionally (sometimes often) have to use interpreters with our patients.
The commonest languages (Gujurati, Punjabi etc) are supported by a partner organisation. They’re very good.
For those languages that they don’t cover we use the local city council’s interpreting service. The interpreters again are usually very good.
With both sets of staff we have to fill in a form for them to take back to the office. This lets the office know that they turned up on time and did their job well etc.
Now the council staff have a set of questions including this one:
Are you aware of the council’s interpreting service?
This might be a good question if you were asking it to a random person with no need of an interpreting service.
However, I’ve just spent any amount of time up to an hour or so with a patient and one of your interpreters! So what do you think I’m going to answer to that stupid question? It’s one of your interpreters who’s handing me the form with the question on it!
If anyone can think of anything witty and erudite that won’t get me sacked that I can write in answer to that next time I’ll be much obliged.
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30 Jun 2010
Posted in Life, Work at 6:45 pm by alby
I just got home after my last day at Willowbrook Medical Centre.
I started there on 1st April 2002, a notable day really. I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that Willowbrook is basically where I really learned what physio is and how to do it properly.
In my time there I’ve worked with a number of folk but the core team of staff has stayed pretty static.
The room was really too small for 2 staff to be there at the same time, the heating was all over the place and the car park is a pain (those 2 “spaces” aren’t actually “spaces” they’re places to walk through, that’s why your car is touching both cars to your sides!)
But the people were what counted. I’m going to miss them.
I’m not actually leaving the team, just that site. We work across the city so I’m going to be in Leicester some more,just I’ll be working over on the west side.
Strange feeling this evening.
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07 Jun 2010
Posted in People, Work at 6:13 pm by alby
I’m one of work’s recruiters. As such I have to attend occasional courses to make sure that I’m not doing it wrong.
One such course was this morning. Odd thing it was.
In these days of belt-tightening there were no fewer than 3 presenters for the course, and no more than 6 or 7 participants.
One of the presenters started off and was a good speaker; she should be, she’s a manager. At one point she handed over to a young lady (no more than 17 or 18 I’d guess) who was visbly nervous.
This young lass stood up and started to speak very quietly. I was expecting a “speak up” from the crowd but, before anyone had a chance to say it, the lass just clammed up.
She looked nervously at her feet, made as if starting up again and then stopped again, more looking at her feet.
Silence for a bit.
The first presenter stepped in with “It’s her first presentation, she’s a little nervous”. And asked her “Are you ok?”
The reply came back in a slightly more firm “Yes, I can do this.”
She couldn’t.
The refrain “I can do this” was repeated lots of times before she began shaking. At this point the manager stepped in and ushered her back to her chair.
The rest of the session was taken by the manager.
Now I see the point of the young lass having a go. I’ll admit to being surprised by that level of nervousness; I suppose I’m used to physios standing up and teaching in front of large groups. Poor girl.
So yes, good idea for the manager being there. Nice idea to have a younger staff member present to have a go at presenting. But at no point was there any indication of why the 3rd HR staff member was there.
As far as I can see a total waste of money.
Oh yes and why are they bothering to update me on the trust’s recruitment policy anyway, there’s a recruitment freeze on!
Spending money everywhere except where it’s needed!
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14 May 2010
Posted in Life, News, Work at 7:57 am by alby
Well things have taken a turn.
Out in the world we now have a bizarre mix of Tory and Lib Dem in charge of everything. I was never so keen on the Cons manifesto but the joint document (here) actually hits quite a few of my buttons.
Away from politics things are also in quite a bit of flux.
I’ve just asked at work to go part-time. And they’ve agreed. This’ll leave me free 2 days a week to work on “other projects”.
One of these projects is an MSc wot I’ve just been accepted on. Many colleagues are looking at MSc Physio courses but I’ve always felt that they’re pretty limited in their scope. So I’ve gone for an OU course in “Advancing Healthcare Practice“. It starts in October, work are keen on me doing it and, hopefully, it gives me plenty more options than a straight physio course.
In addition I’ve had a couple of fruitful chats with private practices in and around Derby. Fingers crossed for those.
Anything else?
I’ll get back to you.
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11 Jun 2009
Posted in Rants, Work at 9:25 pm by alby
Work again.
There are large changes happening in the scenes behind the work I do.
I work for a Primary Care Trust. They organise local health care and they also provide it.
Now this is the source of the problem.
The thought from up high is that there’s a conflict of interest here. How can the people who spend the money also provide the services? Isn’t this unfair on alternative service providers?
The plan is to allow any group to tender for NHS work – IE private companies too.
So they’ve decided already that the commissioning arm of the PCT will have to separate from the provider arm. This will happen before next April.
So my employer will change in the next year.
The most favoured option is for us to become a “Social Enterprise”. NB this means us physios specifically, not the PCT providers as a whole.
In other words a kind of private company. In other other words, not NHS.
If this happens then the people who do the actual work will NOT be NHS staff. However the bureaucrats who organise what services get commissioned WILL be NHS staff.
I wonder how well that will sit with the general public. The cry already is that the NHS has too many managers. What about when the entirety of the local NHS trust is management and admin but no actual healthcare workers?
Ah well what do I know?
The issue for most staff is the terms and conditions of employment. About the only material benefits of NHS work are steady work and a decent pension. If I saw the number of patients privately that I see now then my salary would probably be about 3 times what I get now, but not as good a pension. If I get made to go private and thus lose the pension then I want the benefits of going private.
Can you imagine the hassle trying to hire good, experienced staff? There’s no way unless we can match existing salary and benefits.
So in conclusion: another round of changes done purely for the hell of it, wasting huge amounts of money on an unnecessary scheme which paves the way for privatisation, staff loss, staff morale declining, and which may well change some time next year when the tories get in (not that they’re going to be too fussed about the breakup of the NHS – last I saw they weren’t hostile to the idea of giving their old school mates lots of money – err “privatisation” sorry).
Sigh.
I do wonder why this hasn’t been in the news yet.
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28 May 2009
Posted in Rants, Work at 9:39 pm by alby
Had a patient this week with summat known as “ITB syndrome“.
She’s a runner and had had the pain for a while and whilst waiting for us she’d been to see a private physio.
Now then. There are certain things you’d expect to see in an ITB presentation. She had ALL of them.
Her hips were mildly rotated inwards, she had weak glutes, her feet flicked slightly outwards as she walked and ran, her adductors were overactive and on and on.
So solution is to change all of this by strengthening up some muscles and looking at gait and so on.
Not a quick fix but it works and is long lasting.
Her private physio mind you. Ooh this annoys me.
He did 8 sessions of ultrasound. And that was it.
Utter waste of time and money for her. Makes me so angry.
Sort the problem out rather than “try to tweak the symptoms” maybe.
Still 8 sessions of US would have netted him around £200-250, nice pay for doing nothing.
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19 May 2009
Posted in Self-indulgence, Work at 8:35 pm by alby
Well what a day!
Tuesdays are a long day for me at work. Start at 8 and finish at 5.30 with 30mins for lunch. Doesn’t sound too bad but when the diary is full it makes for a hectic time.
More so today as I’ve loads to do before tomorrow. Student diary to organise. Work out who’s going to have to have time booked off when for student supervision purposes. Letters that need to go out today, referrals to go through (which ones need to be urgent etc), dealing with late patients and problems of other staff. Oh yes and there was no receptionist today either. This means that if a patient is late then there’s no-one handy to let me know. This means multiple trips to the waiting area, just to check they’re not late.
Patients are allowed 10 mins before we can say we’re not going to see them.
So why, on the busiest days, does everyone show up 9 mins late?
It means there’s less time to see them, because of the 3 or so trips to the waiting area there’s been no time to do any of the other jobs I need to do either.
And that was me today. All day! Just hectic.
Failed to get a load of letters done and no time tomorrow either. Grr, they’ll have to wait until Tuesday (when naturally I have a full diary again so still may not have any time).
So that was the “fall”.
Got home to find that my dad has decided to get a new car; which means I get first dibs on his old one. Newer and comfier and more reliable than my current one. Huzzah.
Oh and I got my certificate from the Pilates people. I am now a qualified Pilates trainer. Whoot!
And an 80% on the exam (a mainly subjective exam it should be noted) and my droppy area was “you need to practice the movements a little more” so I can demo them better. But I sort of knew that one. Oh and apparently I “need to highlight positives as well as negatives”. Me negative and picky? As if.
A better end than beginning to the day.
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06 May 2009
Posted in Life, Reviews, Work at 7:22 pm by alby
I was sent another link at work today. It’s one of those “10 things” things where some under-employed journo has to come up with something to fill some pages up.
Anyway; it’s “10 pointless things“. One might argue that the article itself would count, but apparently not.
Now there’s some plenty banal rubbish on it (the pic of the male swan chorus on point 1 was a surprise though) but number 2 is rather intriguing.
Unicycle: As its name suggests, a unicycle is similar to a bicycle but it only has one wheel. The effects of removing a wheel are all negative. Balancing on a unicycle requires much more effort and leads to a much greater likelihood of falling off. Taking away a wheel is also much slower. The maximum speed reached on a unicycle is approximately 35 km/h (22 mph), while Chris Hoy (pictured above) has reached speeds of 70 km/h (40 mph) on his bicycle.
Now I’m no unicyclist but there does seem to be a lot of wrongness in there.
I know this is a light-hearted attempt at filling in dull days in dull office jobs but there’s some good points here.
“The effects of removing a wheel are all negative” eh? Not sure I’d agree.
One of my main contentions re the world is that stuff should be fun. Unicycling ticks that box for plenty of people, hence not useless.
Secondly, why measure such a random thing as speed as a measure of usefulness? In that case a transit van is more pointless than a Ferrari, after all it would be “much slower”. NB the claimed “40mph” is pretty far short of top speed on a bike anyway.
But what else is useful re unicycling?
As I can testify (and Clurb can corroborate), unicycling is much harder work (at least at first). They even mention this but apparently miss the significance of it. It gives you a harder workout, it works your core stability muscles, it helps your balance. All rather useful things from my work point of view. There was even a “unicycling for back pain” article in one of the charity publications from Back Care.
Not sure they thoroughly thought this one through.
Either that or they couldn’t be bothered either because they’re lazy or the article really didn’t need to be particularly thought through.
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28 Apr 2009
Posted in People, Travel, Work at 1:40 pm by alby
Sore this week.
I was in Harrogate again at the weekend for another Pilates course. And my word it was a tough one.
Got there to discover there was an exam at the end of the second day. Then spent 12 hours doing Pilates and learning how to teach it better etc.
So for the exam I was already about done in.
We were split into 2 groups of 6 and then we each had to teach the others 3 exercises with the whole demonstrating/explaining/tweaking and helping out stuff. So if you went first you then had to watch 5 other people do better than you; if you went last then you had more time to worry. And whichever you still had to do 18 exercises over the course of the exam. A normal class would have maybe 10 exercises. So that was physically hard work on its own.
But there was some excellent light relief.
On the Saturday I’d arranged to go to York and stay over with Mamph in return for a curry and company.
Got there to find others had been invited and we ended up in a pretty decent curry house with excellent beer from The York Beer and Wine Shop (excellent place).
This was followed by a trip to a local pub where a round of drinks for 6 cost £7.50ish. Most impressed.
We all headed back to Mamph’s to finish off the evening.
But an early start wasn’t welcome, sadly necessary tho’.
Exam done – think I did ok.
More Pilates requests coming soon (probly).
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