The Wonder That We Call Work!

For the past 6 weeks at work I have been what is known as the dispatcher. These duties involve answering phones from nurses, doctors and other such hospital personnell that need labs test results, need lab test to be drawn, pick ups of specimens on the floors and other such items as what colored tube does this test go in. As well as that, it is making sure that the tests that are ordered come out and go into the prosepected zones, (areas of the hospital that the other phlebs take and do), making sure that there are no duplicates and making sure that none of the draws get missed and if they do, make sure that they get done. As well as these, I am the peace maker, (which those of you who know me I can do well or be the one the disrupts the peace) and make sure that people are doing their fair share. Of course this sounds rather small in the big prospect of the world, but as the weekends go by, my patience amongst other things has been tried and true.
This weekend was particularly hard for me. I was not feeling well, and being the only person that knows how to dispatch, minus the other person who is out on a doctors note for goodness knows how long, I did not have the luxury of calling in sick. 2 other people however did and that left me with not as many people as I would have liked. Normally we have at least 5 phlebs on the weekends if not more, because somebody wanted to work overtime. This weekend I had 3-4. Some coming in later than others. So I had to do a "morning list", about 15 drawns in about an hours time and then come back downstairs to sort out the mess that had accumulated in the hour that NO ONE was downstairs. This resulted in many frustrated nurses and a very frustrated me!
Throughout the day I was constantly fixing peoples mistakes and trying to prevent the ones that I saw coming. We have a new phlebs tat needs a little more training than what she had and I REALLY think that we need to teach her a few tricks of the trade. Needless to say I was out of there about 90 minutes late because of some paperwork and writing up that I had to do because of someone, not naming names, did a newborn screening test on the wrong baby presummably, and both babies test had to be canceled and redone. For those of you who are moms you can only think that the other moms were not happy to have their new baby's foot restuck and bood squeezed out. They were NOT happy AT ALL!
So at the end of the day, well, later than it should be, I went home, ate some lovely store bought cookies and climbed into my nice bed with the electric blanket on it and fell asleep at about 6! slleping through, for the most part until the next morning. I tell you what a good night sleep I had that I haven't had in a LONG time! It was absolutely great to not have to wake up to an alarm clock but to just me waking up! It is truly amazing what a better mood you can be in when you just wake up when your body is ready to!