First Day Back At Work

Hello all, and welcome to my new blog on life working in the NHS.

Today was my first day back at work after 2 weeks of fun and frivolity. During my brief absence 2 projects were due to go live, and we were due to move offices. Upon my return I discovered a 66% sucess rate! The 2 projects had indeed gone live; the latest release of the main hospital system, and computer printed wrist bands had both been sucessfully implemented. However, the office move had not.

This was particularly frustrating as it seemed to be held up by the IT department. Those sharp observers of you who are thinking "Hang on a cotton pickin' moment, don't you work for the IT deparment" may well be asking how can we delay ourselves in moving? Shrewd question that I had to dig to get to the bottom of. It would appear that perhaps we don't have the abundance of networking points that are deemed necessary to run a modern, forward thinking hospital IT department. There was nothing more to it. I had to survey the situation myself, and not being one to be trusted to perform such a complex task on my own, I took one of the team with me.

All was going swimmingly in my team's shiny new office as I took measurements, accounted for doors, windows, pillars and the adverse camber of the new floor until I noticed a discreapancy in the sizing on the floor plan that I was creating. I'd taken all the measurements in inches, but had written it all down in centimeters, so everything was 2.5 times smaller than it should have been! I realised that this must be the standard NHS method of measuring everything, and accounts for many anomolies discovered uniquely in this healthcare setting. Was this the foundation of waiting list calculations? Prescribing budgets? In-patient menus? Who knows. Suddenly the haze of the last 5 years became clear, and I realised that all nonsensical things in life must be measured in this way. Or perhaps my brain hadn't adjusted to being back at work yet?

I also found the project managers office had been used as a dumping ground of all the old stuff from the refurbishment, and had various assorted rubbish in it, including a desk that had been dismantled, loads of shelves, and the like. I'll let you make up your own jokes about PMs!

Anyway back to network points. It now seems that there are two schools of thought as to whether we're going to get the work done that we need by the end of the week, thus enabling a smooth transition to our new workplace next week. Those that say it will happen, and those that say it won't. My money is on... one of those two options!

On a different tack, it seems that a sister organisation of ours has it's own 'Zen' garden. I assume that if the staff sit in the garden according to strict Feng Shui principles, they will have all the necessary Yin and Yang to cure the population of all its ills. Well, Swine Flu at least... well maybe a chesty cough... oh alright then, a small boil...