Thrown in at the deep end when......I was working in a private hospital as a porter when I was 19. I'd been doing the job for about 2 months during the day and now they wanted to train me up on the evening shift. They went on about how cushy it was and that it would be a breeze. Basically, I had to turn up at 5pm, do some heavylifting/moving of patients for about two hours, then sit on reception from about 8:30 till 10:30.
So there I was on reception, basically doing nothing other than reading the newspaper and having cute nurses bring me tea and biscuits. It was my dream job. I could get used to this, I thought. The money was OK, the work easy, and there was some sexy eye candy to gawp at.
So after sitting on reception, feeding my waistline for about an hour, disaster struck. A patient in the operating theatre had died during a major operation. Now just for those of you that have never worked in a hospital, there are certain things that are meant to happen when someone dies, things like informing the guy working on the reception so that he doesn't say something like 'Yes, your husband will be out of the theatre now, he will be recovery room A. I am sure he will enjoy eating those grapes'.
OK, so that wasn't the only blunder: I also had *very* minimal switchboard training. I could transfer calls to other phones in the building but I could not for the life of me remember how to get people back from being on hold. So other friends/family members called to speak to the ward sister (whose phone was perpetually engaged), I had to put them on hold - and I could never get them back. And so they called back - and yelled and yelled and yelled at me. Whoops.
So you can imagine how I felt.
However, I decided to stay there - it was character building to say the least, and nothing that bad (or even close) ever happened again. What an induction!
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Mon 10 Nov 2003, 23:25,
archived)
So there I was on reception, basically doing nothing other than reading the newspaper and having cute nurses bring me tea and biscuits. It was my dream job. I could get used to this, I thought. The money was OK, the work easy, and there was some sexy eye candy to gawp at.
So after sitting on reception, feeding my waistline for about an hour, disaster struck. A patient in the operating theatre had died during a major operation. Now just for those of you that have never worked in a hospital, there are certain things that are meant to happen when someone dies, things like informing the guy working on the reception so that he doesn't say something like 'Yes, your husband will be out of the theatre now, he will be recovery room A. I am sure he will enjoy eating those grapes'.
OK, so that wasn't the only blunder: I also had *very* minimal switchboard training. I could transfer calls to other phones in the building but I could not for the life of me remember how to get people back from being on hold. So other friends/family members called to speak to the ward sister (whose phone was perpetually engaged), I had to put them on hold - and I could never get them back. And so they called back - and yelled and yelled and yelled at me. Whoops.
So you can imagine how I felt.
However, I decided to stay there - it was character building to say the least, and nothing that bad (or even close) ever happened again. What an induction!