Health Care

Everyone has their own opinions on health care. Some believe in privatizing it to make it more competitive, some believe it should remain public. Seeing as this is my blog, I get to voice my opinion here without anyone interrupting me.

1. Canadian health care is based on 5 principles:
- universally available to Canadians,
- comprehensive in its services,
- accessible despite socioeconomic factors,
- portable within and outside the country, and
- it is publicly administered.
These principles govern health care across the country with each province administering its own health care plan - as long as they follow these principles.

2. Privatizing health care would no longer make the system publicly administered, would separate social classes with economic issues, and reduce its availability outside the country.

3. Due to the universal health care we have in Canada, we live by the motto, "Everything is free but nothing is readily available."

4. HEU is, unfortunately, made up of minimally educated workers (compared to other hospital unions), and the highly skilled workers within the union end up suffering for this.

5. Although HEU's wages are paid for by tax money, each and every member of HEU also pays their fair share of taxes - in essence paying their own wages.

6. I hate it when people try and blame health care workers when their grandmother in a nursing home isn't getting the care she needs. Look after your grandmother at home then. Not so easy is it? Think of it: someone else is caring for your loved one. The only way to get things done your way is to do it yourself.

7. I also hate it when people expect nurses to cater to patients and families. Between the nurse, the patient and the patient's 12 family members, who do you think is most likely best qualified to be making medical decisions? And between the nurse, the patient, the patient's 12 family members, and the nurse's 7 other patients, who is most qualified to decide what is a priority?

8. I could go on forever.

STRIKE! Part 2

I understand that there are a lot of people losing their jobs due to the government's decision to privatize some areas in health care, but to be honest, being on strike isn't so bad. I mean, its not my strike so I'm not in danger of losing my job or wages (yet - BCNU is next I think) so I'm basically sitting outside in the sun all day. Apparently, my union is going to reimburse me for lost wages while I'm "picketing" so I truly am getting paid to do nothing. Its kinda neat: I sit around outside, walk around the hospital and visit with friends, go to Tim Horton's in the morning, Dairy Queen in the afternoon, and tan. It just sucks if it rains.

Here's my daily routine:
- wake up at 6:30am
- get out of bed at 7:30am
- sign in at BCNU trailer at 8:15am
- go straight from the trailer to Tim Horton's until 9:15am
- walk around the hospital to say hi to everyone until 10am
- sit with Mar and the other OR girls until lunch, -or-
- find some other hot chicks to hang with
- go for lunch with whoever has the most convenient/fun plans
- sit on the grass outside the hospital until 2pm
- walk around the hospital again to "stretch my legs"
- sign out at BCNU trailer at 3 or 4pm (depending on how fun the people I'm hanging out with are)

As you can tell, this is far easier than any job that exists. The union tells me they'll pay me for my time spent "picketing" but I doubt I'll get any of it until, like, July. Oh well. This is a nice little vacation for me.

One More Time...

I have to do it one more time. Rodney just informed me that we're going snowboarding on May 22. Imagine going snowboarding in May! Its gonna be awesome. A REAL snowboarder goes up whenever the opportunity presents itself. And how can you call yourself a TRUE snowboarder if you going up in summer doesn't make your hair stand up? What kind of WANNABE snowboarder doesn't get excited at the thought of going to the peak of Whistler in May and then coming down for apres wearing shorts? Oh, its gonna be great...

Oh, btw, Randy said he was done.

So, today was my first day out on the picket line. For anyone that doesn't know why I'm there, here it is: The Hospital Employees Union (HEU) is fighting for their jobs which they lost during the governments idea to privatize some services in the hospital. Housekeeping, kitchen, laundry, and some other groups are being replaced by private companies. The BC Nurse's Union (BCNU - my union), and HSA (Health Sciences Assoc. - Jeff's union) are both supporting this uphill battle against the government. For RN's, this means working at "essential services" levels. My new job isn't considered essential so I'm out on the line with HEU and all the other non-essential personnel.

Today was actually quite nice out there. It was a beautiful day so we just walked around, sat on the grass, socialized, and went to Dairy Queen for treats. At least I got to hang out with Mar and her OR friends. I'll be out there again tomorrow so if you're bored, come by and keep me company. Tomorrow its supposed to rain so it looks like I'll be screwed.

Oh nurse!

Man, 3 weeks of working regular hours and now I'm having a hard time working a short, 8hr night shift. I must be getting soft. Luckily, it was an easy night. Working last night reminded me why I enjoy working with patients. Even when they are suffering I find that my job can be very satisfying. I honestly feel like I'm making a difference to these people. Also, I really feel like my patients respect my knowledge and ideas regarding their care. No wonder I like this job. It strokes my ego.

Back to the Trenches

I picked up a shift on my old ward on Saturday night. With this upcoming strike, I figure I'll need the money. It'll be weird working on the ward again. I mean, it hasn't been very long so its not like I've forgotten everything, but it'll be different work from what I'm doing now. I can't wait...

Cell phone

Because my position is only temporary, I don't get a Blackberry like all the other geeks in my department. But, because we do so much travelling around, my manager has arranged for the temporary staff to get cell phones. Nokia 3595. Cool, huh?

STRIKE!!

So I heard in the news that HEU has served strike notice. So, in 72 hours, they plan on going on strike. Don't get me started on what I think of that.

Good News: I probably won't be working Monday.

Bad News: I probably won't be working Monday (but I will have to stand on the picket line).

Good News: the strike probably won't last long.

Bad News: I don't get paid while they are on strike.

101 Things About Me #86-90

86. Like any true filipino, I like love songs.
87. I like bacon in my burgers.
88. I have a set of Corningware, but I've never used it. In fact, its still in the box.
89. I like cats better than dogs.
90. I like being a nurse.

Follow-up

Keeping with my "Bandwagon Fan" status, I must say this:

Man, I don't even like hockey.

Learn to Swear in Tagalog

I thought this was pretty funny. Also, for anyone that doesn't know tagalog, the first words you always learn in another language are the bad ones. Thanks to Gary Cruz, someone I don't know, for this site.

New Second Home

So today I moved into my new office. Its not much, I have to share it with another woman and in May another guy moves in. It has a lot of space though, so it shouldn't get too crowded. But now I have my own computer and my own desk and my own phone. This is so weird to me. I've never worked at a desk before (since school anyway) and I've never needed voice mail at work. If anyone knows how to work my Nortel 3202 phone, you can show me how to check my voicemail from home.

So far, my new job has started a little slow. Just a bunch of training classes and "self-directed" learning. In other words, a whole lotta sitting around. Today, in my 8hr day of work, I put in approximately 45minutes of productive work. The rest of the time I spent setting up the office. Tomorrow I'll be busier. Honest.

Post-Season Ramblings

Bummer. Next year na lang.

Hockey

Vancouver vs. Calgary Game 7 is on right now. Go Canucks Go!

I'm such a bandwagon fan.

New Stuff

I didn't want to do it, but I added a comments section just for all my faithful readers.

Thought for the day

Maybe I'll add a comments section...

My Mug and other loot

When I started my new job, I noticed that a lot of people were carrying around a spiffy new mug. From that first day, I was telling everyone, "I want one of those!" For two weeks I repeated this. Finally, yesterday, I came back from lunch and beside my computer was this box. Terri says to me: "There. What you've always wanted." Yay! I got my mug! I was so happy I said, "I love you guys!" I'm gonna start walking around the hospitals with my new mug. It gives me a false look of importance. But hey, image is everything.

Now you're wondering what my "other loot" is, aren't you? I finally got the keys to my new office (but I still haven't been there), a parking pass for Surrey City Hall, a parking pass for the hospital and a parking pass for the entire region. Wow! I can park at any hospital east of Metrotown for free!
I know, I know, you all wish you could that too. So if you guys ever want to go park at Eagle Ridge Hospital, just let me know. I'll go with ya.

Television

I have to admit that I probably spend too much time in front of the TV. I don't watch it every day, and I don't watch one show religiously, but I will sit in front of the TV for hours at a time. Once in a while I'll get hooked on a show. Before I started nursing, I used to work in a grocery store. I'd work until 10:30pm and be up until 3 or 4 in the morning. At around 2am I used to watch Melrose Place. For a while, 21 Jumpstreet was on at 3am. I stopped working evening shifts and started doing day shifts and I ended up waking up early every day and watching Transformers:Beast Wars every day at 8am.
Nowadays, I just watch whatever is on. In the middle of the afternoon there's a lot of Frasier, Home Improvement, Seinfeld, Star Trek, and Friends is always on. Syndication is a wonderful thing.
What I wonder now is: what's going to be in syndication in 5 years from now? Old episodes of Survivor? My Big, Fat, Obnoxious Fiance? American Idol? Well, I guess old episodes of Friends will still be running and there's always ER, CSI, Law & Order, and The Simpsons. I think our obsession with reality TV has ruined the future of syndicated tv.

American Idol Season 3 Review

This year's contestants suck. Go Fantasia!

The Daily Grind

I had to drive out to Abbotsford today. I don't know how Steve does it every day, because I've gone there once and I'm dreading going back tomorrow. And I'm praying I don't have to go there on Thursday. My manager was talking the other day about wanting to make my temporary position a permanent one at the end of the year. There are 3 of us in temp positions and she thinks she'll need us all after the year is up. I'm not sure if I want to do this permanently. Part of the appeal of the job was that it was temporary.

Pros and Cons of taking the new job permanently:
Pros:
1. more money
2. mon-fri
3. less physical work

Cons:
1. I like my old co-workers better
2. I still enjoy patient care
3. more days off

Friday: skipped church. its okay though - I watched The Passion of The Christ.

Saturday: snowboarding (see below). I have raccoon eye tan lines.

Sunday: went to church. tried to go to white rock but got dissed. watched Hellboy.

Monday: so far, this is what I've done: woken up.

Early Summer

This weather is amazing. Yesterday I tried to go to White Rock Beach to just hang out. Maybe have some ice cream, walk along the pier, people watch... Holy Crap was the place busy. I took me 20 minutes to drive 2 blocks just to reach the place and then I turned onto the strip and looked for parking. As I passed all the full parking lots I looked at the other lane and said, "so if we wanna turn around and look for parking, we have to get into this lineup?" So we said ScrewIt and went to the VW dealership to test drive some cars. But, when we got there, the place was closed! wtf? How does the rest of the world live like this - only getting weekends off when everthing is busy, there's lines everywhere, stores are closed? This something I'll have to get used to.

I kinda miss my old ward. I was chatting with Isabel the other day and she said she was having trouble with some of the staff. I had to go through who's cool to work with, who to avoid, how the coffee breaks work, and how to get away with shit. Normally, I'd be working today so I thought I'd drop by the hospital and give them an ice cream cake. Its a holiday, so they are having a potluck today. They do this every holiday.

Tanning on the Mountain

Today was the final day of snowboarding for the 2003-2004 season. Another t-shirt day but today was even warmer. There were people in tank tops, shorts, sleeveless tops, and one guy skiing in a speedo. Yeah. Just a speedo. And it was an old guy too. I'd tell you what the speedo looked like, but I had to turn my eyes away. There was another guy in a boxer's outfit. He had a robe that boxers wear just before the fight and instead of gloves he was wearing boxing gloves. It was pretty funny seeing all the different costumes that people had on.

I would also like to apologize on behalf of Rodney to the guy that he smoked coming off a jump. I've never seen a mid-air collision before in my life. I don't think the guy was badly injured, but he did go down in one of those sleigh things pulled by the ski patrol. I was kinda picked when I was asking the guy about his knee and one of the "speed control" guys that work at the mountain says, "just wait until the first aid gets here if you don't know what's wrong." Y'know, I don't want to sound all high and mighty, but I probably knew a whole lot more than that guy and just as much as the ski patrol. I wanted to tell that guy to screw off and let me assess the damage. But I just backed off and let them do their thing.

I think as a nurse I have a social responsibility to help. Someone told me once that the Good Samaritan Act, which says that you can't be blamed for at least trying to help - even if you did harm, doesn't apply to me.

Weather Update

The past few days the weather has been pretty fucking nice.

Today: not bad

The rest of the week should be pretty sweet. That's what I heard.

Thank you. Have a good weekend.

Everybody's Got A Story Part 2

I had to give this patient some Tylenol #3's once and I asked her if she had any problems with constipation. Tylenol #3's are famous for constipating people and a lot of elderly people have this problem to begin with. Anyway, this woman told me that she used to have a problem with it, but one day she was in the health food section of her local grocery store (Safeway probably), and picked up this fibre cereal.

The next morning she sat down at the breakfast table and poured herself a bowl of this new cereal. Later that day she had a huge bowel movement and for a few days after she kept on going and ended up with stomach cramps. Not really knowing what else to do, she goes back to the store and starts talking to her pharmacist. She tells him about her cramps after eating this cereal and in the course of the conversation, he asked her how much of it she ate. She explains to him that all she had was one bowl.

The pharmacist laughs and says, "One bowl?! You're supposed to just sprinkle a little bit of it on your regular cereal!"

101 Things About Me #81-85

81. I'm really good at ironing clothes, but I'm still pretty slow.
82. I think I'm pretty good at figuring things out on the computer.
83. I find astrology fun to read, but I don't really believe in it.
84. I live beyond my means.
85. I kind of miss living with my parents cuz things were a whole lot easier back then.

Update

Today was a good day at work. I got a chance to really figure out the software and spent a lot of time just playing with it. Its not finished so there's still a lot that I need to learn, but I have all month to get really good at it. Training at the hopital starts at the beginning of May. All I keep thinking of is: 800 people before the middle of June. Then there's still the other 700. Apparently we'll be running classes 3x/day, 5days/wk. What have I gotten mysef into?

The people I work with are pretty cool. There's this other guy, Brian, that's just like me (except he's smart). Our motto through this whole thing is "What are they gonna do, fire us?" So we pretty much do whatever we want. Tomorrow is our first meeting. I think the hardest thing for me about this job so far is that I have to figure out what I'm gonna wear to work. I don't want to look like a slob but at the same time I want to be comfortable. Oh shit, that reminds me - I have do some ironing.

BTW, things are going great all around. :)

First Day

Wow was today ever boring. My new manager wanted us to go to the same orientation that every new hire has to take. This way, we have a better idea of what kind of information/knowledge they have before taking our class. Today was the regional orientation for the Fraser North region. This was a total waste of time. Tuesday and Wednesday are the orientation days for the Health Information Department. This might be a little more interesting. We'll see...

So I'm sorry to all of my readers that enjoyed my stories from work. No more exciting code blue stories, no more stories of people bleeding on my leg. Well, I'll try to tell some stories from the past. I wouldn't want to let you down. I think my new stories will be less interesting and more to sound of, "this guy didn't know what a mouse was." or "I told one person to turn their computer off and they turned off the monitor." hehe

Anyway, my new job is mostly a teaching position. This is kind of ironic because my mom used to be a teacher in the Philippines (grade school), my brother is a high school teacher, and now I'm working in adult education. Funny, huh? Who'd of thunk it? The new software that I have to teach will go live in June and by that time our goal is to have trained 60% of the clinical staff. Should be okay, right? Well the hospital has about 1500 employees that will be using this program. So we're looking at training 800 people in about 2 months. After that, we just move on to the next hospital until we finish all of them. This should be the end of my contract and I'll be back to my old job: body-bagger and ass-wiper. I'm guessing by Christmas I'll already be missing my old job.

Yesterday

I had one of the docs check out my finger yesterday. I refused an x-ray to confirm whether or not it was broken. If I had it x-rayed, the typical treatment for a broken finger: buddy-taping (taping it to the adjacent finger) it for a week or so then start range-of-motion exercises. If I didn't have it x-rayed, suggested treatment for a finger that may or may not be broken: buddy-taping it for a week or so then start range-of-motion exercises. Why bother with the x-ray? Its just tax money going to waste and me taking advantage of my position in the hospital to access health-care without waiting. The one perk of my job.

So today was supposed to be the last day of my job. All day yesterday I was telling people, "I'll be back tomorrow." But then, last night I get this phone call from my friend at work and she tells me, "You're name isn't on the list for tomorrow. According to the schedule, you're position ended today." So now, I'm off today! Yay! But then this morning, I get a phone call from the ward around 8:30am (why would they think I was awake that early?), and its my friend Anne getting mad at me for having the day off. She told me they had planned a little party for me and now it had to be cancelled. Did you hear that? They planned a little party for me. *sniff sniff* I'm so touched. I'm gonna miss those guys.

Oh, and we should all say our fond farewells to those near and dear to us. Goodbye Dinah's-mole! We'll miss you even if you were potentially harmful. May your departure bring good fortune to all those you've touched. (cue Amazing Grace on the bagpipes) Let us all salute the end of an era.

btw, Dinah is trusting me with the removal of 3 sutures on her upper lip. Here's where Oliver, RN and friend of moles, may show his quality.

Spring Is Here

Another t-shirt day at the mountain. Beautiful weather and nice soft snow. Sure it was a little wet and I did spend more time falling in it today but hey its spring and I was being a little more adventurous. I usually am when I go boarding with Rodney. I took a few jumps today and learned to ride switch pretty good. One little setback though. I think I might have broken my left pinky finger. Localized swelling, pain, bruising, and I'm unable to weightbear with it. Just using the left shift key and typing the letter 'a' kinda hurts. Well, I'm working tomorrow so maybe I'll have one of the docs take a look at it. The guy that looked after my wrist last year is in the cast clinic so maybe if I go down there he'll get it x-rayed for me.