First Day Embarrassments!

NaBloPoMo Day 21
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I found this in my archives. Apparently, I wrote it about a year ago and never posted it. So, I thought I would go ahead and put it up now. It is pretty funny. Remember, this was written a year ago and I did not change any of it.
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First days can always be crazy. No matter what first they are--first day of school, first dates, first day on the job--there is always a learning curve. My actual first day at University Hospital was not that bad. My first day of seeing patients, on the other hand, was a different story altogether!

When I got my patient assignments, I only got two to start with, both of which I had evaluated with Jen (another PT) the day before. I double checked that the first one was on the 5th floor, only to be corrected that it was the 3rd floor. Ok...I can do that. So I set off for the surgical ICU on the third floor. About 30 minutes later, I ended up in the ER and had to ask how to get back to the main part of the hospital! I had never found the SICU, but had wasted 30 minutes looking for it! So, I bit back my pride (a little late, probably) and paged Jen to ask for help in finding it. When she called me, all I heard on the other side of the line was laughter. :) It is a good thing that I learned how to laugh at myself a long time ago! So, she came up and showed me where it is. Actually, the first door I had gone to was right, I had just mistakingly thought it was locked.

OK. So, I got my big "first day" blunder out of the way early. I was good to go. Right? Wrong. Later that morning, I had seen my two patients and was ready for more. So, I went back down to the rehab department to work on documentation. While there, I paged Jen to see who she wanted me to see next. Very soon, I got a return page telling me that I had paged her to the Emergency Code Activation line! Oops! When I looked at the phone next to the computer I was working on, I realized that from the angle I was looking, the words "Code Blue" were hidden and all I could see was the number- the one you use to report an emergency such as- you guessed it- a code blue. I felt so stupid!

Blunder number 2 out of the way. Smooth sailing the rest of the day...right? Wrong again! Around 3:30, I got a page from one of the other PTs asking for someone to help her walk a patient who had a lot of lines to worry about. Let me explain how the pages work. They are text pagers and you can page a person individually, or you can page either the entire department, OTs only, PTs only, or the techs. The pager I had used to belong to one of the techs, so it also gets the tech pages. I had forgotten this and thought she must have sent out an "all page." So, not having a lot left to do, I sent out an all page in reply stating that I could help her. I realized a little too late that it had probably been a tech page and none of the therapists who got my page knew anything about what I was talking about. They must all think that I am such an airhead!

Jen told me that she is going to keep track of all of the crazy things I do and then down the line, she can pull them back out to tease me. Something tells me that before all is said and done, she will be able to write a book! Thankfully, the last few days have been pretty embarrassment-free. I think I am starting to get the hang of things. The learning curve can be painful some times, can't it?

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I still have blunders, but thankfully no more like these!

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