One of the positive things about orienting at the agency job site this week was that I have been too busy to even think about the results of the ultrasound. So at least I didn't spend all week gnawing my fingernails to the quick, as I was busy dealing with highly psychotic patients. I wanted to get inpatient work and boy, did I get it! This place's minimum psych acuity level is stepdown.
But today is a day off, so I called the military clinic to follow-up on the test. I was very pleasantly told that my results are in and that she will leave a message for my doctor's nurse to call me back with them. However, she told me that the nurse has 48-72 business hours to return my call.
Translation: unless I get exceptionally lucky today (ha!)...expect the call sometime next week.
Nothing I can do about it except now worry some more...especially since they didn't tell me, "oh, it's negative, nothing to worry about." Instead I have to wait to talk to the nurse...and while my test result may still be negative and I just happen to be a victim of a P&P that requires only the specific nurse may discuss any test result with the patient, it's doing nothing to relieve my anxiety.
Bah.
So the first week of agency work went well. I oriented in a place that is very high-acuity: two stepdown/ICU level units and an emergency unit. No real difference between the two stepdown units except their names...so I will call them Stepdown 1 and Stepdown 2. Stepdown 1 seemed calmer than Stepdown 2, but I may have also caught Stepdown 1 on a good day...or caught Stepdown 2 on a bad day.
The ER is like a psych ICU but with more handcuffs and very short patient stays, because after 24 hours in the ER patients need a disposition: go inpatient, get transferred or be discharged. And there are LOTS of patients walking/being walked/being carried through the doors. It was like working at my last facility, only there's enough staff here.
I was blessed with three great preceptors. They all had different approaches to their work, so I learned a lot. They also had different attitudes about the place, from "great place to work!" to "CYA at all times." I consider all advice seriously so it was interesting to hear the different views.
Of course there were bumps in my performance--after all, I am orienting to unfamiliar turf. But overall my preceptors had good things to say about my work, and even the supervisor told me she heard positive feedback about me, so we shall see what happens. I don't know if the agency will me call me today to start scheduling...we'll see.
Meanwhile, I plan to enjoy the day off and (try!) not to think about the test results.
