This week was the big week!! Taking the reins for the week.
Since it was spring break, I was able to work 10 hours shifts like everyone else. I worked a 40 hour week this week. Woke up at 5:30 am, got to work at 7, had my first patient around 8 and then went home around 5 – 5:30 pm. That is the schedule for a lot of health care workers.
Monday and Wednesday are procedure days. We started to get back into the routine of back to back procedures. Because of the pandemic, we didn’t have a lot of patients scheduled back to back. But now it is started to get back to “normal”. When we called back the patients we had to verify their last name and date of birth to insure that we had the correct patient. Then we got their weight, blood pressure, temperature, oxygen and heart rate. This was crucial for pre-procedures to insure that they are ok for the procedure. Also to update their patient information. We also had to make sure they stopped their medications or wasn’t taking any additional medications that would interfere with the procedure. Post-procedure we would get the vital signs again. This is also crucial because the procedure could effect them like dizziness, numbness, and tingling which can effect the way they feel. After they were ready, they either had to go schedule a follow-up or they didn’t have to schedule anything further.
The rest of the week was just new patients or follow up appointments. We still had to get vitals and PHQ-9 depression form like normal but new patients were a little different. We had to get additional information which included, patient family history.
I was really getting the hang of how the clinic was ran and what was expected of me as an MA (medical assistant).