*phew*
I have just finished my first week at my new job! I decided to put all my stressful events into one summer- marriage, new job, now we're looking for a house, oh my.
Anyways, I went from working at my teeny tiny little rural hospital, where I worked with primarily geriatrics- strokes, joint replacements, broken bones, etc, to big bad UW Hospital. It is 2 million square feet. I'm not kidding. They told us this at orientation. And man, I am feeling every square foot right now. I intend to spend the entire weekend lounging around doing nothing at all.
At my little hospital, I was working with every setting, from ICU to acute to subacute. UW does it a little differently, everyone is assigned to a particular couple of floors or unit. This is to cut down on the extremely time consuming task of running from place to place (and getting hopelessly lost, like me). Apparently, they've been having trouble keeping a PT in orthopedics- it's basically just joint replacements, which is a pretty standard protocol, and therefore a little monotonous if those are the only patients you are seeing. So they've decided to rotate every PT in the place (there are about 20 of them) through ortho on a 2 month basis. My job is to rotate INTO whatever floor they leave, so I'll be jumping around every 2 months. Should be interesting- at least I won't get bored!
Anyways, they are starting me in Trauma and Neurosurgery. Seriously. They asked me questions like "So, what did you do with your patients on ventilators?" My answer: "Well, generally, we sent them to UW Hospital." Eek. I am now working with people with tubes coming out of their brains and screws right into their skulls. This is a little nerve wracking, and I really hope I'm doing okay.
I survived the first week- and hey, so did my patients, so that's got to be a good sign, right?
Anyways, I went from working at my teeny tiny little rural hospital, where I worked with primarily geriatrics- strokes, joint replacements, broken bones, etc, to big bad UW Hospital. It is 2 million square feet. I'm not kidding. They told us this at orientation. And man, I am feeling every square foot right now. I intend to spend the entire weekend lounging around doing nothing at all.
At my little hospital, I was working with every setting, from ICU to acute to subacute. UW does it a little differently, everyone is assigned to a particular couple of floors or unit. This is to cut down on the extremely time consuming task of running from place to place (and getting hopelessly lost, like me). Apparently, they've been having trouble keeping a PT in orthopedics- it's basically just joint replacements, which is a pretty standard protocol, and therefore a little monotonous if those are the only patients you are seeing. So they've decided to rotate every PT in the place (there are about 20 of them) through ortho on a 2 month basis. My job is to rotate INTO whatever floor they leave, so I'll be jumping around every 2 months. Should be interesting- at least I won't get bored!
Anyways, they are starting me in Trauma and Neurosurgery. Seriously. They asked me questions like "So, what did you do with your patients on ventilators?" My answer: "Well, generally, we sent them to UW Hospital." Eek. I am now working with people with tubes coming out of their brains and screws right into their skulls. This is a little nerve wracking, and I really hope I'm doing okay.
I survived the first week- and hey, so did my patients, so that's got to be a good sign, right?