Double Duty
I have admittedly been remiss in submitting blogs in a
timely manner and actually have a deadline of 5 pm today! Me, Miss OCD! How
could this happen?
Well, for one, work days are so busy sometimes that I barely
have time to breathe -- average patient seen 25 to 30, from STD exams to
primary care. And since I decided to take full advantage of electronic
prescription (we do not yet have EMR but have the capability to use the
Allscript e-prescribe product), I have also taken on full responsibility to
produce a complete medicine list for each patients that I see because my nurses
were slow to adopt the new technology. Since March 2012, I sit at over 1,000
electronic prescriptions submitted, and the only handwritten ones in my
practice are for benzos or cough syrup containing codeine (our consulting MD
instituted a no-narcotics policy).
Another reason for my "delinquency" is that I've been going
full bore in my second job, medical transcription. One of the second shift
transcripitionists has been on maternity leave since mid-June and will be out
until mid-September. Since June I've been working nearly 40 hours at MT between
evenings and weekends (worked 14 hours this past Sunday to make sure every
report met turnaround time by Monday).
People often wonder how I can work 80-hour weeks and my
answer is that MT is like meditation. I change into PJs or loungers, put on
classical music, turn on the Tiffany lamps, brew a nice cup of hot tea, plug in
my earphones, and let the drone of the dictators' voices flow from my ears to
my fingers, keyboard clicking, and before I know it the night is done. MT is
the ideal second job - I not only make more money at it than being an NP, it
also keeps me up-to-date on the newest treatments and procedures, with each
patient narrative adding to my reserve of differential diagnoses.
It's actually amazing how my two jobs fit together. Once
life settles down in mid-September, I will tell you about the patient I
diagnosed with a pilonidal cyst whom I referred to surgery, and ended up typing
his operative report for same!