Former NHS Nurse and manager now contemplating the NHS from outside

Archive for September 23, 2005

Not sure if it is me but…….


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!!

Friday!!

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!!

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