21 Feb 2012

Must Know All The Things

Oh my brain!

So, unit 1 was interesting and I got through it at a good pace. It was on the family caring role.
Unit 2, however, has made my brain hurt. It is on the role of care within the NHS.

I worked in the NHS for 8 years. I left a month ago. I started out as a receptionist, barking at patient's who wanted an appointment (actually, I was nice, generally). However, I was quickly promoted to clinical coding, with special emphasis on chronic disease and QoF. This means I know far more than is usual on diabetes, COPD, epilepsy, asthma, hypertension, CHD, CVAs and atrial fibrillation. For the first year of my improved role, I concentrated wholly on diabetes and COPD, getting the registers correct and a recall system in place. I got to know all about compliance, specialist clinics and how to interpret blood results. None of that was in my actual remit, but I absorbed the information from working on the data all day, every day.

So, Unit 2 is all about diabetes. If I had known very little about the disease before starting, I'd have probably sailed through without concern. Instead, my brain has been turned up to 11, almost re-analysing everything I know about diabetes within primary care. All the prejudices of hierachial care (which I came across rather a lot), all the non-compliance, all the expert patient knowledge snuck back into my brain with KNOBS on.

It makes me want to go back to work and develop a strategy for diabetic teaching with the nurses.

I think that's the problem. I want to act on this new knowledge. I want to go and do something useful with it instead of letting it wash over me. And I can't, because I don't have that job anymore and may never have that level of influence in another job.

It's something I need to work through because it's going to keep cropping up!

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