Yesterday when I breezed into work I got the customary hellos. When I put my belongings down and then clean and log onto my preferred computer, I go out again to review the evening's lineup with the medical assistants.
S. is a woman who I have worked with for many years and I have gone from thinking her a commonplace Bostonian to understanding that she strives to be an intellectual. S. is middle-aged, married several times over, a heavy smoker and has countless children and grandchildren. Her hair is dyed bright red and she wears flamboyant colors in scrub wear.
S. has returned to school with an ultimate goal of becoming an RN. To some small extent, she has chosen me as a mentor and it is far different to estimate the needs of a middle-aged careworn learner as opposed to young students with optimistic goals. S. wants to graduate, get a job as a real nurse, and be respected. I try to offer her my wisest opinions and strategies.
I am often surprised by the range of S.'s inquiries and have sometimes struggled with supporting her learning needs. In fact, I have lost most of my laminated copies of the musculoskeletal system by lending them to S for study of anatomy, among several textbooks and others items. It really doesn't matter that she keeps them because on some level I know it is important to S. to have things which I have used and find worthwhile.
Yesterday, out of the blue, S wanted to talk about Ardipithecus ramidus, "Ardi", an ancient hominid-like woman whose remains indicated a branching out in evolution to more human like morphology. S.'s speculations were interesting and thought provoking but I had little time for a discussion. However, during my drive home from work there was an interview on NPR and a discussion with Owen Lovejoy who studied the skeletal remains of Ardi.
The strangest occurrence at work with that our medical charting system was overhauled and many features were changed. No one in urgent care was informed of these changes and we were left to fend for ourselves. My friend, A, said "Just show me what you are doing, and I'll try to duplicate it." What I did was to find remains from the old system and incorporate them into my orders and charting for the new. It mostly worked. I became the missing link in electronic charting. I will try to move along the evolutionary scale tonight when I deal with this new system again.
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