Exhausted as I am, I couldn’t really let today go undocumented.

Today, I managed a clinic…

I arrived in my clinic at 9 and introduced myself to some already slightly harassed looking receptionists. They said hello. I explained that I really had no idea what I was meant to be doing. They laughed. I said I wasn’t joking. They stopped laughing.

It was explained to me that my general purpose was to get them out of trouble when they got in to it. I smiled (thinly, I imagine) and said I would do my best. They laughed again, a little too loudly this time.

A registrar arrived and complained to me that she had been double booked for todays clinic and didn’t know what to do. The same thing had happened last week, she said, and it was ridiculous. I agreed. She went off to try to work out what to do while I bleeped my line manager. She arrived and told me the registrar was wrong and not at all double booked and this had been explained to her last week. The registrar came back and said the other clinic had been cancelled, so it was ok anyway. I nodded at everyone.

Bleeping people, incidentally, is fun. You pick up a phone, punch out some numbers and hang up. A few minutes later someone calls you back. I am thinking of getting some bleepers for all my friends.

So, the registrar was happy. Next up were two sets of notes which lacked any contents what so ever and were, as such, empty folders. No one was around to help me find the notes on the system I still cannot access, so that one had to wait.

Happily I was distracted by the arrival of a cross man who was complaining loudly about how rubbish something was at the reception desk. He asked who he should talk to about his problem. Everyone turned to look at me. I smiled.

His problem, it transpired, was that he had turned up 3 times or so to this clinic and each time had discovered his appointment had been mysteriously cancelled by some computer-based malevolence. Up with this, he informed me, he would not put. I sympathised. He asked me what he should do. I smiled at him. He said he was going to wait to see the doctor, come what may. I said that sounded reasonable and, given that that was his decision, I would see what I could do.

To the lead consultant’s room, I wend my bemuséd way. I had to wait outside his room for about 15 mins before I could grab him between patients. Having done so, I asked him if he could take another patient today. He shouted at me. I took this as a maybe. On an off chance, I tried the registrar, judging her to be young and cocky. I was not wrong, she said she would fit him in.

Back to reception I go. Pleased, I report that we can fit the extra patient in. The clinic is really very busy by now and it takes me some time to get anyone’s attention. Eventually, the receptionist says that he will enter the gentleman on to the system, but that I must find his notes. I agree that this is fair enough. He asks me if I know how to do that. I say no. He makes a sighing sound.

While I wait for the friendly receptionist to call medical records for me, I am engaged in conversation by various patients and staff who suddenly notice, at roughly the same time, that I am wearing an ID badge. I smile and nod a lot.

Medical records have pulled the notes for me, but I must go downstairs to get them. The receptionist tries to explain where medical records is, but gives up. I say I will find it. He tells me there are signs. This is a lie.

20 minutes later, I find medical records hidden in some sort of extra-dimensional corridor in the basement. Brandishing my ID at the slightly lost looking lady in charge of the apparently infinite shelves of patient records, I am given the notes I crave and I fight my way back up out of R’lyeh to return to my clinic, somewhat out of breath.

By this time, the clinic is heaving with grumpy looking patients. Many have been here about as long as I have which is, by now, almost 3 hours. The patient who has, for some reason, become the focus of all my managerial attention tells me he must but must see the doctor now as he can wait no longer. He uses the words ‘now or never’. I find the registrar, and ask her when she can see him. She says she can see him next and puts his notes at the front of the tray outside her room. I say thank you, tell the man the good news and begin to feel pretty pleased with myself.

A tall, darked haired man wants my attention. He is not pleased. He has been waiting to be seen for quite some time now and I have just placed someone elses’ notes in front of his.

Diplomacy doesn’t even come close.

All in all I was on my feet (literally) from 9.00 until 2.00. Then I had to attend a meeting. I had lunch at 3.00. At one point today I got in to a lift and was so thrilled to be alone in a tiny white room I almost cried.

I proved I was who I said I was to IT today. They are gonna give me access to the system. Next tuesday.

Fills you with confidence, doesn’t it?