Ranting pants.

The end of last week saw me in full ranting mode (quietly and to myself mostly) but still ranting.

Getting ‘stuff’ here seems to be a priority occupation and many organisations perpetuate the problem by handing out things with abandon (a controversial statement but it happens!!) but even when you identify a genuine need and feel justified in meeting it, things still can come back and slap you in the face. I’ll explain…

My main job here is to be someone’s shadow, in the background helping people to come up with the ideas they need to get things sorted and making sure what needs to get done gets done. However, so far I’ve been a one man team…its been interesting, liberating even, to empty my head onto paper and come up with something that may eventually really help healthcare be what it needs to be out here. I’ve been getting used to ‘office work’ and its fun playing a new game but I’m acutely aware that being the ‘frontman’ for this programme may well be its downfall because to be accepted by all the nurses and midwives out there its got to come from the Nurses and Midwives Council as a whole. But the ‘whole’ is not there. The right words are said to the people that matter, the intentions are there but the follow through is not. For many reasons (can’t be bothered, don’t know what I’m doing, happy for you to do it for me) as well as lack of ‘stuff’ like computers means that things just don’t get done or time is wasted doing things that needn’t be because it must be done properly - a conversation or a post-it note doesn’t do the job, things must typed, printed, photocopied and filed.

(I’m only just getting started here…)

So, many a time have I whipped up and printed off a letter or memo or a report or whatever for my OfficeMate because I’m right here, laptop in front me and printer down the hall, and its fine but its not why I’m here (despite thinking that I’d have a lot of fun being a secretary!) Petty as it sounds, because it doesn’t take long to do those things, it does mean I’m doing her work on top of all of mine and that’s not right. So, when the opportunity came to get a laptop sorted out for OfficeMate I took it, the IT officer worked jolly hard getting it networked and fixed up and I thought ‘marvellous’ it’ll be a good thing!

How wrong was I? I was visited by DirectorLady (the direct manager of OfficeMate and myself) and admonished for my efforts. I hadn’t apparently written adequate memos informing everyone round about of declaring the donation of the damn machine despite having informed The Chief about it. Questions in the budget meeting were asked, face was lost (the main issue I think) and therefore I copped it. I fumed for 5 minutes and then thought how silly I was being and moved on but then thought some more and fired myself up again about it all. Why do I bother sometimes? How long is it going to take for me to get to grips with all this ridiculous red tape and stop being so exasperated by it? Should I even be playing this game? Shouldn’t I just be trotting up and down a ward somewhere doing what nurses do?

Late Friday afternoon OfficeMate pitched up and felt it necessary to have another dig. She started off by graciously accepting ‘this great machine’ but followed it up with a few less than gracious comments about how it arrived in her presence and that I must learn better about how things are done. Like I said…’Why do I bother sometimes? How long is it going to take for me to get to grips with all this ridiculous red tape and stop being so exasperated by it? Should I even be playing this game? Shouldn’t I just be trotting up and down a ward somewhere doing what nurses do?