NHS Screwup

NHS Screw-up
9/14/2006

Love fills the pages of our lives with joy and laughter…

Mary Aris

        Tuesday, September 12th, 2006: 

 I go to the Churchill Hospital on time, Have a meal at the Canteen and  ready to start my shift at 1:00 O’clock.   I go to the Oncology Department and ask for Caroline and introduce myself as the lady from the NHS Professionals that will be starting my new assignment at the Oncology Department.  They say they don’t have a Caroline working there.  I’m escorted to a lady’s office who tells me to sit down while she sorts this out.  She phones the NHS Professionals and they tell her that I have to start work in the Urology Department.

  I follow the signs to the Urology Department and appologize for being 10 minutes late.  The lady, Caroline says that it doesn’t matter and introduces me to Sharon, the secretary for one of the doctors in Urology.  She greets me and shows me around the office then sits me down on a computer to start my assignment.  She gives me  list of patient names, hospital numbers and GP addresses that I am to type on a  template.  I do that beautifully. Ocassionally I ask Sharon if I am doing it right before I do all of them wrong and have to go back and correct them. She says I’m doing fine and then says ‘Now type the letter’.   I look around the folder she gave me and I find no letter there.  She tells me that the letter is on the tape inside the brown manilla envelope.  She sets up the dictaphone for me.  I listen to the tape and start typing.  I have to rewind the tape several times in order to type the letter right.  The last time I used a dictaphone was in 1981 in the School of Business Machines.  The NHS Placement officer didn’t explain that they needed a audio typist to me when she offered me the assignment. I must admit that inspite of it all, and even if I had to rewind the tape several times I typed the whole thing correctly save for the spelling of a few medical proceedures.  I typed two letters on the list.  It took me twenty-two minutes to complete each letter.  I came home at four O’clock and my husband met me on the stairs.  He told me that the NHS phoned him and told him that they are cancelling my shift because they had put me on the wrong assignment.  The Department of Urology needed an experienced Audio Typist.  Gee wiz! I phoned them back but the opportator that took my call said that the lady who phoned my husband earlier was on a break.  He said she’d phone me back, but she didn’t phone me on the 12th of September.  I had to phone again the next day.  I repeated what the lady told my husband.  He pulled up my information on the screen and told me that effectively this shift has been cancelled for me and that was all he could say.   I wonder why they call themselves ‘Professionals’.

      Christmas is almost here! There’s just 108 days before Christmas!  This year my husband and I have to be a bit frugal with our gifts for everyone but we’re still having a fun Christmas.  We’ve booked a reservation at the Broadlands Guesthouse in Stratford-Upon-Avon and have tickets to see ‘West Side Story’ in December.  We’re going to have a geat time!  Alex’s cousin lives  in Stratford so we’re planning to visit her when we are up there.