Da Count-A Matter of Respect

It's been a month since I started my new job. I have to say I give thanks every time I go there because I am not going to be yelled. I won't be expected to nag patients into submission. Procedures won't change daily. I won't be told I am idling about if I take a minute to stand up and try to collect my thoughts amidst the chaos of shouting doctors, ringing phones, screaming kids, and blaring music. I won't have to take heat for things that I had nothing to do with and I won't have to put out fires the boss lights. I no longer have to have an extended internal dialogue to will myself out of bed in the morning in order to face my job.

Instead I go to an office where the staff genuinely get along and enjoy each other and where we laugh riotously at some point every single day. The doctors cultivate a calm atmosphere. There is a real sense of teamwork. Procedures are well established and there is order in the records yet there is an ability to be flexible as reason dictates in a given situation. Th bosses have been encouraging as the other new girl and I learn our duties. When they've needed to correct us on something they've always done so gently and they've added what we have been doing right. The bosses regard their staff as people who are part of the healing process not just as sales staff or, worse yet, as overhead. They recognize that we have families who need us too. They have been very accommodating of the single mothers who work in the office.

Basically it boils down to this. At my former office the boss regarded her staff and patients as children who needed to be pushed and prodded into compliance to her will. Staff and patients were not worthy of respect because they could not be trusted to make the choices she wanted unless she was breathing down their necks constantly. Where I work now, the doctors trust their staff to do their jobs with a measure of professionalism, courtesy and compassion. They educate their patients and then respect whatever decision the patient makes even the patient decides to disengage from care.

Every day I go to work I give thanks for the atmosphere I am walking into and for the people I will be working with. What an incredibly refreshing change.