Your Summer Ride is a Beetle Convertible

Fun, funky, and a little bit euro. You love your summers to be full of style and sun!

What’s Your Summer Ride?

Not unopened ones, just those you haven’t had time to do something with. Ok so you are likely one of these people who have done the time management courses, you know never read something more than once before it is either actioned or binned. Maybe you have more time, or your head is less full than mine seems to be every day.

Today though was the day of the inbox clear out, where 120 became 9. It might have been less, but my boss isn’t back till Monday and it seems unfair just to forward them on when she will have 3 weeks worth. I am very proud of the fact that I sorted them by sender and then dealt with them in an extremely systematic way. I even finished off 2 quite large pieces of work I have been avoiding. I have been thinking this week; I am not good at finishing things, excellent at starting, rubbish at finishing. But today I did myself proud, I ended the week with a nearly empty inbox and I also sorted out my computer files - delete, move, delete more; very satisfying. Life in the NHS isn’t so bad after all; perhaps it is the wine I’ve had since I got home?

Let me set the scene; you are referred by your doctor to your local hospital to be seen by a specialist. Who do you think is responsible for producing the letter following the consultation / operation / investigation? Well in my local hospital, apparently the consultant’s oral dictation is sent to the far east and the letters typed and returned for the previously highly valued secretary to check. Not surprisingly these secretaries are feeling seriously undervalued.

Having worked as a specialist nurse in that particular NHS trust I know that it is not always easy to understand what is being said during the dictation, I have helped the secretary in our department to work out using the notes exactly what the doctor is trying to say. The trouble is that those trying to cut costs by sending work to other countries in this way are trying to save money without seeing the full value of what exactly a medical secretary does. Often they are the main contact for a department, they know where various team members are at any time, they act as a way for patients to maintain contact with their doctor, they are in touch with GPs and other doctors over appointments. What I can say is that they do not just type letters.

I am not against cost effectiveness, what I am against is the down right devaluation of an important, but often hidden role. What we need now however, is the doctors for whom these ladies work standing up for them; after all they are the ones, who will probably suffer most. They might one day have to book their own appointments, a typist in India is not going to do that!

Ok so she isn’t the modern secretary, but those dictaphone machines were in use quite recently, I kid you not!

Your Career Type: Social

You are helpful, friendly, and trustworthy. Your talents lie in teaching, nursing, giving information, and solving social problems.You would make an excellent: Counselor - Dental Hygienist - Librarian Nurse - Parole Officer - Personal Trainer Physical Therapist - Social Worker - Teacher The worst career options for your are realistic careers, like truck driver or farmer.

What’s Your Ideal Career?

What slightly puzzles me, is how an accident 10 miles away, and going in the opposite way to which I needed to travel caused massive local chaos in my home town today. I am beginning to think that we are headed for wholesale gridlocked traffic one day soon in the southeast of England. I would be less likely to belive that this could happen if I hadn’t spent 10 hours travelling 20 miles on a night nearly 3 years ago following 2 inches of snow fall.

That night still brings me out in something of a cold sweat, and makes me less likely to want to sit unnecessarily in a traffic jam seemingly going no where. so if, as happened this morning, there is the prospect of turning round, having another cup of coffee at home and actually getting a piece of work done then why not? I am dreading moving to my new office; it’s situation near to the M1, M25 and other major roads makes it a prime place for traffic chaos on a regular basis. Sitting in traffic makes you irritable and tired and it really doesn’t agree with me. Why don’t you use public transport ? I can hear you ask. Well if only this were as simple as it sounds. Yesterday’s trip into London was a joy, but while my office is not far from train and tube stations, several train changes would be needed to get there from home. As for the bus; I’d rather sit for 10 hours on the motorway in my car!

Today has been quite interesting and also fun. A day away from the office, the usual meetings and general issues of managing people is not to be sneezed at, especially if you make sure you don’’t think about what is mounting up for you back at base.

I needed to be in London at the Langham hotel (it wasn’t dark when I was there but it looks very attractive at night don’t you think?) at 9.30, and for once there was a space in the station car park and the train was on time. So far so good I thought. This was my first trip to the capital since the awful events of July 7, and to be honest I haven’’t really wanted to go there until today. I have never been particularly worried about terrorism until now, after all I did my nurse training in London during the height of the IRA bombings (Hyde Park etc.) but maybe I am older and more worldly wise now. It struck me that the tube was less busy at 9am than last time I was there (at the end of June).

Anyway, onto the Langham Hotel which was very plush with a red carpet leading to the door. Once I found my way to the Portland Suite I was met by Jon from Performance Leadership Academy who was running the day and taken to the room where continental breakfast (coffee, juice and pastries) was being served. My fellow participants were as usual mainly women from a variety of backgrounds (nursing, HR, education and training etc). We had an early chat about the state of the NHS and leadership there in.

Basically the company want to sell us a programme for whole organisation leadership / management development. I knew this, and wasn’’t worried about the idea of being lured in by the hotel and food etc, after all this is something we do need; particularly as we are embarking on such wholesale service and organisational redesign. Sorry dropped into some kind of NHS jargon there. The thing I liked was that this is driven by the need to address competencies around communication, people development, relationship management, leadership, standards and accountability, planning and decision making.

One of the most interesting learning points for me, and I do like to learn something, was that for all the differences in funding, the healthcare systems in the US and the UK are not so different. Barbara, who was delivering the session helped us see that the problems we face, for example hospitals and health care providers that spend more than their income, spiralling bank and agency staff costs, falling numbers of nurses and other health care workers are faced on both sides of the Atlantic.

Following a very nice lunch and more networking and chat about healthcare organisation issues we had a short after lunch session during which Barbara went through the issues which led to the Apollo 13 near disaster as an example of innovative working. I will probably cover a bit more about that when I have had time to think more about it. On the way home went up to the Apple shop and exchanged our iPod speakers which had stopped working and headed home. To be home by just after 4pm was something of a treat.

Your Animal Personality

Your Power Animal: EagleAnimal You Were in a Past Life: Whale You are active, a challenger, and optimistic. Hard-working, you are always working towards a set goal.

The Animal Personality Test

I have just spent a whole day in the office. I don’t remember when that last happened and for once I seem to have achieved some outcomes (it’s all about outcomes you know!)

I was meant to be going to a meeting first thing, but running late after taking my offspring to see our GP (see previous post for details of the booking and appointment saga) I rang in to offer late apologies, only to find that said meeting had been cancelled. Apparently an email had been sent round this morning; very useful. Still I arrived in the office earlier than expected and was able to get straight to it!

One of the things that annoys me so much now I am an office type is that I seem to start more projects and pieces of work than I manage to finish. This could of course be down to my organizational skills, or perhaps the level of interruption which goes on in that place. I often think we should do a time and motion study to see just how many phone calls, emails and letters which slow the progress of an average day. That reminds me that when I was a district nurse we did something along those lines for management, we had to write down everything we did every day for a week. It showed that we all did far more than could be physically fitted into the time available; surprise surprise we heard nothing more!

Anyway today I actually completed some work, and that can’t be bad. Tomorrow I am off to a hotel in London for a day about leadership; looking forward to that as you can get breakfast before hand (need to get that early train) and lunch too. Can’t be bad!

As a group, we nurses are not really all that good at getting involved in the politics of the organisations who employ us, or of the National Health Service as a whole. We are good at moaning that things are not as they should be, that managers don’t understand the challenges of caring for our patients and that change is done for change sake. But very few people get involved in making sure their voice is heard. That goes for others working in the NHS, probably the most vocal and those who get their voice heard most are the British Medical Association. In the last few days the BMA have began to mobilise against the proposed changes to primary care and the commissioning process. Quite rightly they identify that this feels like the end of the NHS as we know it, they worry about the future of hospitals and the jobs of doctors; well they would wouldn’t the? My question is where is the voice of nursing in this? The Royal College of Nursing has remained silent. If they have nothing to say, then what is the individual nurse to think?

The main change which is going to happen, is that the commissioning arm of the Primary Care Trusts (PCT) will strengthen as will this aspect of the work of GP practices which have combined into super practices. But what is called the provider arm (nurses and therapists to you and me) will need to be delivered by which ever group can provide the best patient pathways for local people. Well this is the gist of it. The providers could be the PCT itself, but kind of a provider arm, it could be the private sector for example a hospice providing care to people who are terminally ill, or it could be a private organisation. Who is to stop a large private health care (or other) organisation setting themselves up to provide the care out there in the community or in the surgicentres and then employing the nurses currently working for the PCT. Who employs those individuals? Do they still work for the NHS and is it NHS care which is being provided. The media focuses on people needing an operation and quite rightly on how long the wait for that operation might be. However what they fail to recognise is that this particular initiative is about people with conditions which cannot be cured by an operation as such, and may suffer from several conditions at that. This care is labour intensive and expensive and long term; is this the area private industry will want to be involved with?

In a speech last week, Patricia Hewitt the Health Secretary, said that she does not like change for changes sake. Well Patricia, where I am sitting this feels like just such a thing. I am not denying that changes to services are needed. There is far too much custom and practice going on, people doing a job in a way that has always (or for a long time) been done that way. But do we need to go through another expensive process of complete change?

I know of people in fellow organisations who are seriously looking at their career options. Thinking that perhaps obtaining a law degree would be an option. After all the law is less likely to change than the fast revolving NHS. Personally I quite like change, it keeps you on your toes, but this is down right scary.

Language.

I never realised before I started this whole blog thing, how different American English is from English English is. I have just been reading back through some posts and can see that some of my words and therefore meaning have changed through spell checking my posts. Spelling has never been my forte (can’t do the accent on the e here, or if I can don’t know how). I have downloaded the blogging word thing, and will try that in future as I like my blogs at least looking like they mean something to me. Thats not to say there’s anything wrong with American English of course.

The Keys to Your Heart

You are attracted to those who are unbridled, untrammeled, and free.In love, you feel the most alive when things are straight-forward, and you’re told that you’re loved. You’d like to your lover to think you are stylish and alluring. You would be forced to break up with someone who was ruthless, cold-blooded, and sarcastic. Your ideal relationship is open. Both of you can talk about everything… no secrets. Your risk of cheating is zero. You care about society and morality. You would never break a commitment. You think of marriage as something precious. You’ll treasure marriage and treat it as sacred. In this moment, you think of love as something you can get or discard anytime. You’re feeling self centered.

What Are The Keys To Your Heart?

Though not so sure about the last pararagraph, the rest is scarily accurate!

I am glad to say that as a family we have a reasonably high standard of personal hygiene and cleanliness; even my 14 year old showers more than once a week! One of my main bug bears with hubby though is that he thinks towels are a once only use item. Use it, and throw it somewhere, maybe the floor as it misses the overflowing laundry basket; already full of other towels. Still he has offered to buy me a tumble dryer for Christmas to help with the load. I have a surprise for him if he is serious; it is only 2 weeks till HIS birthday!

But towel use isn’t what this particular rant is about, oh no. I am talking here about the fact that neither of my men folk seem to notice when any area of the bathroom or downstairs cloakroom needs cleaning. They are oblivious to toilet cleaner, how wonderful Cillit Bang or flash is. I could go away for a month…….no let’s not go there. I just wonder if women are programmed in a different way, that they don’t see dirt in the same way a woman sees it. Still maybe there is something I need to face, maybe I am just a wonderful person and they know it?

I am having no luck at all with the contact lenses lately. Ok so they don’t make my eyes look like this, but if they keep splitting in my eye who knows what will happen?

In the UK you average monthly replacement toric contact lenses are not exactly cheap, around £20 per month give or take a pound or two, so it is not the best thing to be sitting in a meeting and suddenly realise something odd has occured around your right eye! I’m not even due to change them over till the beginning of the month. The meeting wasn’t exactly going smoothly either, I arrived just before 2pm and found just me and the chair present. I had been invited along to advise on the education and training aspect of what they were to be discussing, so wasn’t best pleased. The other participants, thinking that the meeting began at 2.30, arrived at around 2.35! What a way to run a meeting. Still managed to escape, along with my blurred vision at around 3.30. It all adds to the joy of the week rounded nicely by a pizza and some red wine. I know that I am meant to be dieting, but it was very nice!!

It is scary that I am so relieved that it is Friday. This isn’t because I don’t like my job, I do, but because for some reason the sheer pace of life at work has worn me out this week. I think the bane of my life working in the NHS is the meeting. I go to far too many of them, but try as I might I can’t seem to cut them down. Today I have two actual meetings, plus a get together with a colleague from another PCT allegiance. It is rare for the meetings to last less than 2 hours, then you have to get there and where ever you are going next.

If you are going to go to meetings you need to be fully involved in whatever group it is, that means being able to participate fully, and to do that you need to have some how found the time to read the previous notes and at least part of the other attachments meeting chairs like to send out with the agenda and previous notes. After you have been to the meeting you may find yourself with a piece or in my case often pieces of additional work before the next meeting in a month or two. Then it is off to the next one.

Now I don’t mind the actual meeting, I am a people person who likes the sound of their own voice, but what I struggle with is the sheer volume, the fact they are often back to back and what I hate most is never feeling like you have the proper amount of time to do what feels like real work. Mind you that could be me, I could be poorly organised and poorly prepared, but I have a hunch that I just have more to do than is really sensible for any human being.

But it is Friday, and tomorrow I get the chance to stay in bed longer and then do shopping and housework; yipee!!

You Are Likely a First Born

At your darkest moments, you feel guilty. At work and school, you do best when you’re researching. When you love someone, you tend to agree with them often.In friendship, you are considerate and compromising. Your ideal careers are: business, research, counseling, promotion, and speaking. You will leave your mark on the world with discoveries, new information, and teaching people to dream.

The Birth Order Predictor