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Some Days, It Just Doesn't Seem Worth It
Written By Rich on Apr. 19, 2007.
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I've worked for the NHS for 6 months now. My official job title is Data Analyst.
I was hired, ostensibly, to help prepare the hospital for the introduction of a new patient record management system. It's big, it's worth billions of pounds, we've got bigshots like Cerner and Fujitsu on board, and it's going to fail spectacularly.
The Brits may have heard of this already, the rest of you probably haven't. But that's by the by.
As I said, my official role is collecting, correcting and cleaning data. Specifically, patient records. (It's one hell of a power trip having access to the medical records of everyone in Britain.) I enjoyed it for a few months, but it soon went down hill. It will come as a surprise to nobody that the NHS is hardly the most organised, er, organisation. My job is a joke.
At the moment, I've been roped into assisting with patient detail audits, something that happens about once every five years. I'm expected to go to various clinics and wards with patient lists and ask the listed patients to confirm that the details we have on record are correct.
Not part of my job, not in my job description, entirely below my skill level. Absolute joke.
But I'm gritting my teeth and getting on with it. The money's good, and it could lead to bigger and better things.
And today it did.
It's not official yet, but I'm going to be designing, developing and maintaining a website for the NHS. It's going to look incredible on my CV. It's only a small Intranet site for our department, but this is the sort of thing that really can lead on to better things.
A month ago I was considering quitting. Put that into perspective.
Today I learned that no matter how bad a situation may seem, there's a silver lining somewhere.
I just wanted to tell someone.
peroty
Written Apr. 19, 2007 / Report /
Congratulations on the persistence paying off!
estarla
Written Apr. 19, 2007 / Report /
Congratulations!! One true example of "staying the course" really paying off...
JulianBH
Written Apr. 19, 2007 / Report /
Congratulations Rich!
auburn
Written Apr. 19, 2007 / Report /
Many congrats! A good example for the rest of us knowing that something exciting career-wise can happen out of persistence.
markomni
Written Apr. 19, 2007 / Report /
Congratulations! I had a similar thing happen to me. I was really enjoying my first job after college, but after a couple of years I was dreading it. I continued to bust my ass working on the many little things I was given, as well as various pet projects. Many of those pet projects were outside of my job description and they went uncompensated, but they were interesting to me, nonetheless.
Two years and two promotions later, I am now working on projects affecting our entire organization, rather than just playing with pet projects affecting only a small portion of our organization (usually just me).
Staying the course, while daunting at times, helped me get to where I am now.
Ollie
Written Apr. 19, 2007 / Report /
I'm pleased my tax money is finally paying someone with a brain (I'm assuming you're on the NHS payroll - I don't actually know).
Congratulations, stick at it, sort out the mess, become Prime Minister, give me my tax back (just got P60, Holy Cow!) and give me decent medical treatment. That's all I ask for...
Nice one Rich.
karmatosed
Written Apr. 19, 2007 / Report /
I did a brief stint in the NHS on a data consultancy contract. It was shall we say insightful as to what a complete mess it was - this was in pathology where lost results / mixed up results was literally a daily occurance on a mass scale that should scare people. I was hired to develop methods and plans to stop this happening along with advise through reports (cos reports help so much), however it turned into a come in the morning get a pile of a print out - one long long sheet of many results per page that were wrong - go through it and try and play match maker with half complete data. At the end my report was not great on the 'it's not a problem' side, but I did have some suggestions and I doubt anything even got put in place I'd suggested. I hope so but seriously doubt it.
bloglily
Written Apr. 20, 2007 / Report /
Good for you Rich. I'm impressed you stuck with it.