She works hard for the money

I'm a working girl - finally!  Monday marked my first day of employment as a PA-C ;-)  I sat through 2 days of hospital wide orientation before they let me loose on the patients.  Orientation was okay, but how can you make benefits, HIPAA, information security, and Occupational Health interesting?  I did learn a lot of good information and facts about the hospital though, and it made me respect the organization and really look forward to being a part of the team.  They even included some stories from family members who had been touched by the hospital which was a nice personal addition.  I also met some new employees who applied for jobs there specifically because they had children who had been treated there and were so impressed, they immediately wanted to work there.  I thought that was awesome!

After sitting on my bum for 2 days in a freezing conference room, I was looking forward to being on my feet and running around like a crazy woman seeing patients.  I got myself all spiffed up before the sun came up in new scrubs, my stiff white coat and my bag stuffed with stethoscope, pens, notebook, pocket reference guide, pen light and reflex hammer.  I felt like a little kid on my first day at school!

I was expecting my first day to be mostly shadowing my trainer and perhaps doing a procedure if there was one to be had.  Well, I met my trainer, we looked at the board, picked up a patient and it was decided that I would see the patient with my trainer standing by in the room.  Yikes!  It had been more than 3 months since I interviewed or examined a patient.  I did okay, only forgetting a few questions, but my trainer was there to ask them and I felt pretty good.  Because of patient privacy rules I can't go into specifics about cases, but everything I saw was rather straight-forward and if I wasn't sure on something either my trainer or an attending was more than willing to help out.  Since the day wasn't too busy, there was a lot of downtime and we got to leave a couple hours early.  Not too bad for my first day!  Based on just this first shift, I think I'm really going to like it there.  The best part was seeing the kids and getting a smile out of them - they are just so fun to be around!

I was all ready to come home, finish cleaning up the house in preparation for the arrival of my sister's family, and relax.  Little did I know what was to become of our evening (more on that another time)...