So, I got a job.
Not a job like I thought I would have. No brave new world of healthcare IT, no remodeling of the medical information infrastructure. Instead, I have turned into a consultant, of a sort.
It turns out that there are insurance companies that use nurses in an advisory capacity, translating medicalese into legalese so that contracts can be administered and claims paid (or not). My wife, She Who Must Be Obeyed, started working at The Company about a year before I finished the Medical IT survey course up at OHSU. She thought it would be a great match and that my critical care nursing experience and knowledge base would be a winner in the workplace.
Well, kinda.
Anyway, I have been there for about a year and a half now. It doesn’t feel as weird as it used to, seated in front of a computer monitor instead of a cardiac monitor. The folks I work with are nice (if a little straight laced, a positive quality in an insurance company that like to project a conservative, practical image) and the hours are fine (if you like being awake when that really bright shiny thing in the sky – Sun, yeah, that’s it – is out).
It’s been kind of a strange journey to suitville, and I miss the patient care. But I still do nursing of a sort, and the stories still come.
I’m back.
Hooray, hooray!!!! So glad to see you on these here intertubes. Hey, while you were gone, there was this whole LOLCATS phenom, it’s funny. Srsly. Prolly some other internet goodies, too. What? Oh, you saw those while you weren’t blogging? Oh, okay. Still, thrilled to see you here.
Thought of you recently when I said (in offhand manner), “Oh, they’re worried that so-n-so is circling the drain… What? well, um, by that I mean, well, there’s this nurse I know, who’s a blogger, and he said….”
Hi Al,
welcome back! I’ve been checking your website regularly, hoping that you would start writing again, but I only checked the homepage and missed your two postings until Hal and Garret pointed them out today. I’m looking forward to reading your postings again!
Cheers,
Andrea
Good to see you back. You’ve been missed.
It’t been a while. Good to see you back. You’ve been missed.
Hope life always treats you well.
Welcome the ranks of the no longer practicing health care professional. Next month it will be 11 years since I stopped practicing medicine and started leveraging my knowledge in other ways. Great to have you back on the web.