While I wait for the axe to fall at my disciplinary meeting tomorrow, here is an old scheduling email from the days when my credit was higher.
rom: Kirsty Jordan
Sent: Friday, 22 December 2017 3:12 p.m.
To: Wellington Anaesthesia All Staff
Subject: Festive explanatory email
Seasons Greetings Everyone!
There are a number of new people in the department, so it might be a good time to explain how things work in the scheduling office. The very excellent Chris J and I share the task of scheduling anaesthetists to lists. We do it week about, so that I do every theatre week one and he does every theatre week two (not the same as the 1st and 2nd weeks of the month, which are a completely different kettle of fish, although a source of endless confusion to the feeble minded. The problem is, private hospitals, and therefore some specialist anaesthetists, work on a monthly pattern, rather than a fortnightly one. Having said that, some of our theatre lists do go on a monthly cycle, presumably because the surgeons, too, have private commitments ). Neither of us are here full time, but you will often find at least one of us in our office in the corridor of power at any one time. Fridays are best. In addition, we have both got used to dealing quite promptly with our 100 or so emails a day about scheduling issues. Scheduling phone calls are much less frequent. In fact, I get far more calls about orthopaedic problems (ortho reg phone #6884) than I do about scheduling (my number #6844). Corridor conversations must be followed up with an email reminder, as I won’t answer for sequelae from age related memory lapses. Compliments, bribes, requests or gentle suggestions are welcome anytime.
Complaints should generally be filtered through management. The official version of the following weeks schedule comes out on a Friday, although a provisional version is often sent out earlier in the week. If you can check this as soon as you get it, that would help in avoiding any nasty surprises on either side. In fact, we generally schedule several weeks ahead. These are available in our office or on the intranet. The charming and patient Cindy can help you with this. The official schedule is usually followed with an explanatory email. This is to provide further detail on what is happening on each day of the following week. We often accompany this with a little light banter. Chris likes to comment on important world events, whereas I usually just talk about myself. Anyway, we are generally regarded as friendly and approachable people (pretty representative of the department as a whole in fact) so feel free to come around and say hello. We aim to please. In fact, at my yearly (confidential) appraisal meeting with Sally yesterday, she was very positive about my contributions to the department. In particular, she gets lots of positive feedback about the lovely anaesthetist who always brings tasty treats to the Friday morning production planning meeting. Now, I know that it’s actually Chris who brings along the snacks, but I’m sure the middle aged ladies representing the various surgical services there think of us as a team. I’m planning on handing on the scheduling torch to some eager beaver later this year, haven’t yet chosen a suitable candidate…
(Here follows an entirely irrelevant paragraph that can be easily skipped to save time) I’ve had a number of people ask me how we managed to get charged $1000 for ball tickets by our daughters’ school. Well, it gets worse than that. It’s four tickets per daughter for the leavers ball, and we’ve got twins. That’s $2000 for eight tickets! We haven’t even got that many friends! The leavers ball involves the girl dressing up in some fantastically expensive dress (sometimes purchased on shopping trips to Europe, I kid you not), and then being presented to the bishop of Wellington, like debutantes of old, so that they are now officially “out” and available to get married, I suppose. What an anachronism. Not to mention tedious beyond belief. They’ve made the tickets compulsory, because “of course everyone will want to come to the most important event of their daughters life, it means so much to her!” And if she can’t find a suitable (male) partner, one of the teachers has a healthy sideline in renting out her numerous nephews for the evening. I discovered from my eldest daughter recently that they were told that it was very important that they went to the ball, because “it means so much to your parents!” What a swizz. A bit late for regrets now, I suppose. They havebeen exposed to a surprising amount of diversity there. There’s a wide range of political opinions at the school, running the gamut from National to ACT. They had two friends who ended up making gender identity changes, one who wants to live as a boy , and another who doesn’t identify with either gender. Of course, they’ve both since left the school, would have been awkward if they hadn’t! Also, they have one friend who is actually a Pacific Islander. Her Samoan father often gets mistaken for a terrorist, but that happens at airports, too, so you can’t really blame the school.
Monday
Christmas Day! Hooray! Our girls still get a visit from Santa, because my husband is a big softy. Don’t come to work unless you must, in which case, good on you, and many thanks from the rest of us. Ditto for tomorrow.
Tuesday
Boxing Day! Another STAT, or “Bank Holiday” as the Brits still insist on calling it. What’s so special about the Banks that you care if anyone is working there or not? We know who to blame for the GFC, don’t we? Perhaps you should be working harder rather than taking all this conspicuous time off.
Friday
If there are any ophthalmological acutes around then they’re going to fly a surgeon up from Queenstown to do it, and he’s to be provided with part of an acute list, no questions asked. Alright for some! I’m having to come down from Waikanae for an acute evening session this week because I can’t find someone else to do it, do you think the hospital would helicopter me down if I asked them nicely?
And that’s the end of my last schedule for 2017. Thank you all for your hard work and general good humour this year.
It’s not all fun and games for some at the moment: a special thought for those of you going through hard times, and I hope 2018 will bring some improvement over the horizon.
Kirsty