9News and Denver Health

This week has been CRAZY busy for me!! And by crazy busy, I'm really not kidding.

I spent all of last week working two jobs everyday...I had to miss the beautiful weather we've had :-( Saturday morning I got up and worked the 9News Health Fair as a phlebotomist first thing in the morning. Can I just say....poking healthy veins as opposed to the veins of those in the hospital is SO nice?!?! It was cool to freshen up my skills and know that I actually do have my phlebotomy skills :-) I came home and took a quick nap and then headed to Erie to go babysit six kids for the evening.

Sunday I spent (trying to) sleep, which was somewhat successful.

AND THEN......

I started my new job bright n' shiney Monday morning.

And by bright n' shiney I mean before the sun was even up. I was on the Denver Health campus by 6:30am and spent the next 11 hours there. Monday was a long New Employee Orientation and then Tuesday/Wednesday I spent 10 hours each day (starting at 7:00am both days) at what was called Nursing Training. As a new Healthcare Tech I will be involved directly in patient care so we had to go through "special training" in regards to hearing a lot about different units and all the privacy/legal stuff that goes into direct patient care. It was some great training but it was three long days sitting in a chair....which was hard for two reasons...being up early each morning coupled with long long days AND sitting all day long. I'm not always such a sitter!! And then yesterday I got to actually start some of my on-the-job training.

Now let me explain a little bit more. Denver Health is a Level One Trauma facility. Meaning they specialize in high trauma. Think mass casualties and severe trauma...well they are great at that. If you come into their Emergency Department (ED), you have a 95% chance of leaving with a pulse! Pretty great statistics!!

Their slogan is Level One Care For ALL...meaning (and especially being in the heart of downtown Denver) they serve all populations regardless of ability to pay for the care they receive. So we serve a lot of minorities and at-risk populations. Poverty. Behaviorial/psych. Underprivileged. Etc. They campus is really pretty damn big and houses a lot of different needs. They have a lot of community and school-based clinical sites, house poison and infection control, have a huge lab and serve the prison populations. They have a floor that treats eating disorders and have several psych wards. Denver Cares is a detox/psych arm of the hospital. They have a SICU, PICU, NICU, MICU and regular ICU. They have Labor & Delivery, Mother/Baby, Med-Surg, Ortho....and all those other areas you hear about in every other hospital. It's just a massive health care system.

Now what's my job?! Well I'm a Healthcare Technician. What does that mean?! I'm a CNA with other qualifications or extensive experience in healthcare. I'm assuming the combination of having my CNA license, my Phlebotomy licensure, and experience working with special needs and home health care landed me this position. So I'm a step above a regular CNA but a step below an LPN (Licensed Practicing Nurse). Now what unit do I get to work on?! I get to work in the CCMF. The what?! The Correctional Care Medical Facility. What?! Basically I work in the unit/department that treats the prisoners!

No I'm not kidding. I'm dead serious (no pun intended)!

It's actually a really safe unit...accompanied by the Denver Sheriff's Department as well as other officers of the various jurisdictions that use DH's services, I'm in one of the most dangerous yet safest units there is!!

I will be trained as both a ward clerk and a healthcare tech...doing both desk work and healthcare work.

Pretty exciting stuff.

I'm pretty exhausted but am pretty excited about only having to work 3 12-hour shifts a week to pay my bills! Gonna be hard and a lot of work but let's do this! So that's all been my whole world for the past couple days :-)