Categories: uncategorized
Date: 28 January 2005 19:47:28
Bizarre day today - I covered my colleague's antenatal class (see whinge from last Friday about the first installment of that!), found that the colleague who was supposed to leave me a video for the midwife to show hadn't done so and nobody else was in apart from one of the auxiliaries who didn't know about it. The auxiliary was really helpful and eventually got it for me, and told me how, although there was only one health visitor in the health centre that day, she had refused to keep her mobile phone on in case the auxiliary got calls from parents which needed a health visitor as "I'm not going to burden myself with that". That is just the kind of attitude which is really hacking me off about my job - I try to be helpful and cover other colleagues' groups or clinics if I can and if they need it, and yet if I need cover it's like trying to get blood out of a stone, it's way too much hassle for anyone. This week and next week I've had to arrange evening visits as it's the only way I can get all my work done, and yet the aforementioned colleague didn't pitch up to work yesterday till late in the afternoon, has a much much smaller caseload than me and nobody bats an eyelid. Managers have said to my colleague who works in the same practice as me that they're aware that we have a larger caseload than we're supposed to, well that's lovely but as they're not doing a thing about making things more equal I'm afraid their awareness doesn't count for very much. I can't wait to hand in my notice, which is a shame as I do actually love health visiting in this area (most of the time!). I just can't stand working with lazy colleagues and managers who spout platitudes but still leave us to get on with things and are never available when we need to contact them. Gah.
And then by the end of the antenatal class I had such a bad headache I could hardly open my eyes. So I went home and tried to sleep it off, I dozed and can you believe it, in my waking moments I felt so guilty for not being at work. I'm getting a lot of stress headaches, and mostly work through them unless they're really bad, but a number of people in my wider team (not the people at my practice) would take a fortnight off if you gave them so much as a funny look. The headache's better now for the afternoon's dozing anyway, but I could really do without the associated guilt.
Thank goodness it's the weekend. I'll be completing my uni application form (amongst other things) and praying very fervently it's my ticket out of here. Sorry to moan.