Sunday, June 22, 2008

If you can't take the heat...

NewFNP is hot.  She is - sadly - not 'hot' in the new hair-do, flattering trousers, sassy flats sense of the word.  No, she is talking about the Holy shit! Who turned up the heat and why in the hell don't I have central AC kind of hot.


And newFNP is also frustrated.  This is not a good combination.

NewFNP is sending out a cry for help.  NewFNP does not like herself much of the time anymore when she is at work.  She is mean.  She hears the harsh tone of her voice and cringes.  She is endlessly frustrated by the half-assed work of the support staff.  Each and every day, she is correcting other people's mistakes and dealing with other staff members' shitty attitudes and disappointed by the lack of improvements in the system despite her efforts.  She hears that people have called her bossy, which is true, and a bitch, which has been true but is not something newFNP is in her outside clinic life.  NewFNP wants to not care about what people think, but she does.  And newFNP does not want to be a bitch.

NewFNP spends so much time looking for unfiled labs, asking her MA to find unfiled labs and doing laps around the poorly designed clinic in an attempt to find her MA in order to ask her to find unfiled labs that she could probably see an extra 1-2 patients per day if this one issue were to be solved.  She is fed up with the growing piles and piles of unfiled charts on the floor of the file room while the clinic staff sits and chats about whatever crap it is that they talk about.  She is frustrated that the very young and very overwhelmed clinic manager is impotent when it comes to actually managing the clinic and the staff.

As an aside, there are many reasons that drive the resistance against change in newFNP's clinic.  When newFNP eventually leaves, she'll share them with you and it will make your heads roll.  But the infrastructure is so unique that it would be a dead give-away if anyone in the know was to stumble upon the blog.

So what to do, what to do?  NewFNP doesn't want to leave, but she doesn't want to be a bitch and she doesn't want to be frustrated.  

Her CV looks pretty slick.  Will her local major university -- and her alma mater -- think so too?  Because newFNP submitted it in an act of sheer desperation.  She is looking for options.  And a pension.  And a salary increase.  But to leave would mean giving up what brings newFNP joy - caring for her patients.  

A conundrum indeed.

Thankfully, newFNP has the Death Cab concert, her super-duper friend from South Africa visiting and not one but two grad school pals visiting this week.  She'll be too busy with her real life to worry about her work life.


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

gotta take care of #1 first, girl. sounds like you are on the express train to Burnout City. Was the job you applied for at a university student health center? what do you think it would be like to work there?

Anonymous said...

want an East coast School Based Health Center job??? Pension, horrible salary, great coworkers, making a difference.... Totally NP run.....

Jenn said...

Quite the conundrum indeed! Enjoy the time with your grad school friends! It always works out in the end.

Serena said...

You absolutely have to take care of yourself, first. If they aren't paying attention to your needs, then retention isn't that important to them anyway!

Anonymous said...

wow. i wonder if we work at the same clinic...

it seems a difficult thing, perhaps it's to give up identity for freedom? i struggle with this ambiguity of purpose at my clinic. it is all so complicated and messy and at the end i am a just a cog.

i get so bogged down sometimes and then i think...where else would i have clients who give up crack for lent.

now how could i possibly give that up :)

i have watched 4 NHSC countdowns at my clinic this year. i wish you happiness & clarity in this time of crappy argh.

m