(Ignore my hair – I was bored and experimenting).
These are a few work “diaries” I made when I first started my job as an MA. I wish I had kept up with these videos, just to document my journey and struggles, but in some ways, I’m glad I didn’t – they just would have been videos complaining and who wants to hear that.
But these two videos were made at pivotal moments in my “career”, (and that’s in quotations because I still, to this day, don’t think of my job as a career – probably because I’m prepared to walk away at a moment’s notice), so I thought you might find it interesting to watch them. The first one was on September 27, 2011. I had just gotten hired on September 19, 2011 and I had no idea what I was doing. I was grappling to figure what was going on and how I could make sense of it enough for me to jump in and do my part.
I wasn’t trained well. I was trained with blinders one, meaning, I didn’t SEE the big picture. How was my work affecting everyone else’s job. I would literally stare at the computer and the different programs, and all of the options just to try and make sense of it because no one taught WHY we did what we did.
I would go home CRYING because I was so frustrated and felt stupid because I wasn’t “getting” it. But I didn’t give up and I slowly starting figuring out what my role was and what I was supposed to do. And then I started figuring out ways to be more efficient and soon, I was ROCKING it.
But it wasn’t easy and I’m proud of myself for conquering a career I knew NOTHING about. Google was my best friend back in those days and if I came across a term I didn’t understand, I looked it up. I listened to pronunciations through Merriam Webster so that I could correctly say medical terms because I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of patients, or my co-workers.
Because of my training experience, when it came time for me to train new people. I made a point to focus on the WHY we did things. I wanted to make sure the new people coming in saw the big picture so that what we were asking them to do would make more sense. I’ve been told I’m a good trainer, I don’t know about that, but I do know the people I train tend to stick around longer and do better, overall.
I felt confident in what I was doing and I truly loved it. I THRIVE on multi-tasking to this day and scheduling for three, (sometimes more because I was that good – not cocky, just honest),back then required a lot of quick thinking and volleying back and forth between taking care of patients that were in front of me, patients on the phone and internal messages from the clinical team asking me to do various things.
I. WAS. CRUSHING. IT.
But it was an exhausting pace. There was NEVER a down day, or a slow day – it was a marathon sprint from the moment I clocked on to the moment I clocked off. And everything was on a deadline. I would schedule testing and the clock would start ticking. Would the insurance companies approve the testing in time for the appointment? Patients that called yesterday will start calling back because they haven’t heard back or haven’t gotten an answer yet. In the meantime, I still have to go through my doctors’ upcoming schedules to make sure the patients have completed the tasks that the doctor recommended they complete before they come back. If not, I had to call them and reschedule them because nothing makes a doctor more cranky than to see a patient back that didn’t do what they wanted them to do.
What’s the point?
I got to the comfortable stage. I’VE GOT THIS. I was confident, fast, efficient and people were now coming to me for help. It was awesome.
Fast forward two years and then this happened:
The result of that meeting? My scheduling job ended up being absorbed into an MA position. I had mixed feelings. I was scared, because what do I know about being an MA, I was angry, because I loved being a scheduler, I was nervous, because I had no idea which doctor they would assign me with and let’s face, neurosurgeons are SCARY. Some of them had a reputation of being volatile and hard to please.
My world, the world I struggled to understand, control and then conquer, just imploded.
I’ll make a follow up video soon about my experience entering the world of being a Medical Assistant and what these past NINE years have been like. This is actually a good time to make another video because my working world has just changed again these past few months and now I’m entering a new phase of my working life.
Stay tuned.
Write From Karen 