Jobs I really wouldn't want to do

[menthe_reglisse]

No. 1 in a (very) occasional series.

Anything on an Early Pregnancy unit or ward.  I’ve spent my fair share of time in these places and they are SO stressful.  The waiting room is full of people in varying degrees of anxiety because you only go there if you’re bleeding or having potentially dangerous pain or have a crappy reproductive history or

Comments

[barakta]

Interesting thought re acute vs chronic

[menthe_reglisse]

No, no, didn't experience it as invalidating at all, but as an interesting possible explanation.

That's very silly and wasteful of your Mum's experiences. Glad she told them to stuff it.

[thekumquat]

Yes - I squeed hugely when my EPU scan showed I was indeed pregnant with a 4-month healthy-looking baby, and said to the staff 'this must be a lovely job, giving people good news'

They carefully mentioned that mine was the first good news they'd had that morning. Being around 8am I hadn't thought about why most people were there - dating scans were as far as my brain had got.

What I would like to know is why a 'normal' postnatal ward, which is as happy a place as you can get in hospital albeit with exhausted hormonal women, doesn't get staff better able to deal with it.

[aster13]

I don't think they have an early pregnancy unit as such at "my" hospital. We have the Day Assessment Unit, and the ante natal clinic, the "delivery suite/labour and delivery ward", the postnatal ward, and the nicu and scbu.

[kissmeforlonger]

I think the treatment in fertility clinics is at least partly down to the culture of the managing consultants. Other staff take their lead from them. One in Leeds is famously led by someone who is appallingly bad at people skills but very good at his job otherwise - he specialises in hormone difficulties and has reduced to tears at least two of my friends who went to see him re PCOS by his brusque-verging-on-abusive manner. With fertility patients I know from other people that he's absolutely lovely. It's quite odd! And the clinic itself is not without its problems - I would speculatively say that if he's anything like as horrible with his staff as he is with some of his patients it's not a very nice place to work.

And the one I worked with in Manchester has been lovely and very professional every time I've had dealings with them. OK they're a private clinic, but still... a compassionate manner costs nothing.

[artremis]

or the women in the EPMU are being fasted in case they need surgery and are grumpy beacuse of that as well as all the stress of needing to be in an EPMU