Well, I've been training as a relief Intake Coordinator for 6 night
shifts now and after the first two, I thought I already had enough learning to
be able to do it independently soon and I told the charge nurse so. Boy, was I badly
mistaken when I finally trained with Jonathan, the Lead Intake Coordinator, on
my third shift.
The first night, I was oriented by Marlana, one of the night shift
coordinators. That time, I observed what she did and took notes, then compared
my notes to the resource or reference book that the department had. I noted as
much details as possible, or so I thought. I never got a chance to even answer
any phone calls because the only 3 or 4 that came were answered by Marlana and
after that no other calls came in. I didn't even touch the computer that night.
I typed up my notes in my own computer, which I kept adding on to later after
subsequent training nights.
The second night, again with Marlana, I went to the intake department
at about 10:40 p.m., having been asked by the charge nurse to help in the detox
department first since7 p.m. By the time I arrived at the intake department,
there were no more beds available in the hospital's psych units and with the
phone calls I answered, I only had to tell the callers that we were full. No
computer work again that night.
After somewhat digesting the notes I had in combination with the
resource book, I thought I had more or less a grasp of what needed to be done.
I still needed to be connected to a shared network drive though, to access some
logs that the Intake Department used. The hospital uses the Epic electronic
medical records system and I thought that I was already set up to access all
the sections that the intake coordinators used. Of course, was mistaken, as I
learned later.
Finally, this much older Kwai Chang Caine had the opportunity to train
one night under the Shaolin master himself - Jonathan. After setting up my
personal desktop on the hospital's computer network, we found out that I still
needed access to the shared network drives that the intake department used, as
well as areas in the EPIC electronic medical records system that I had no access
to as a Behavioral Health Worker. Jonathan asked me to contact the Information
Systems office so they can resolve these issues. Eventually, after a few phone
calls and email exchanges with Information Systems, I was finally given access.
In addition, the hospital's admissions department gave me a username and
password for the Passport One Source insurance verification system.
On that first night with Jonathan, he went into finer details about medical
insurance companies and verification of coverage, what insurances we accepted
and what we didn't, Medi-Cal from other counties, and I finally had the chance
to enter information on EPIC after we received some calls regarding possible
admissions. Entering information was where I started getting bewildered because
there were so many things to remember, e.g. - click here, type a note here,
close here, open this section, pend here, sign here, reserve here, and so on
and so forth. It didn't help that I didn't sleep well the night before and my
concentration was already poor. Jeez, how am I going to remember all of that
and even if I did then, will I remember them again on the occasional times I'm
going to be asked to relieve the full time intake coordinators?
I told the charge nurse the night before, that perhaps I may be ready
to undertake the job on my own after orienting with Jonathan for one night.
When the charge nurse asked me how I felt at about 3 a.m., I told her I was
dazed and confused and that my brain felt so numb, like I just finished 3 finals
tests in college. It was then that I asked her to give me as many training
nights as possible. In the back of my mind, I was thinking I was never going to
figure out the system and was reconsidering whether I still wanted to do it or
not. Boy, oh boy, what have I gotten myself into?!
A few nights later, I was able to train with Shaolin Master Jonathan
again and he let me sit on the captain's chair. We answered the phone on
speaker and he was able to listen in and help me answer questions from callers
which answers I didn't know. When it was time to enter information into EPIC, I
would turn around to him to ask for clarification on what data to enter and
where, since I had already forgotten most of them from a few nights back. It
was a pretty busy night because we were barraged with calls from 7 p.m. until
about 1 a.m. It was a great challenge to try to multitask and I was glad that
Jonathan was there when I couldn't catch up. But, on a good note, I had a lot
of opportunities to enter data on EPIC and it was very good practice. Still, I
had to turn my head backwards to Jonathan so much that night that I may have
gotten whiplash if not for the swiveling chair. Towards the end of the shift
Jonathan told the charge nurse that this grasshopper was doing a pretty good
job. He was being supportive of course because I felt that I didn't do as well
as he said I did.
Did I tell you that I developed insomnia while I was training in the
Intake Department? Well, when I tried to sleep, things I was trying to learn
and how to do them kept creeping into my mind and made for bothered sleep. I kept
thinking about how to do things the right way that it was starting to stress me
out.
On my fifth training night, I was with Jane. Jane was a little bit
more animated in the way she taught me as compared to the more relaxed way that
Marlana and Jonathan did it. I still had to refer to Jane a lot that night when
I had doubts on what to do next. One thing different that Jane taught me was to
create a template for the End of Shift Report. After five training nights, I
still didn't feel comfortable with the process.
It helped that I was able to
orient with three different coordinators and I was able to see how they did things
their own way to arrive at the same result. Hopefully, I will be able to
incorporate the information I learned from all three into my learning process.
On the sixth training night, which happened to be the first time I
trained two nights in a row (the others were separated by several nights off or
working on the psych units), I was back with Marlana. I took all the calls that
night other than one when I was using the bathroom. Between referring to my
notes, a cheat sheet that Jonathan had given me, the resource book, and an
occasional look back towards Marlana, I seem to have navigated my way through
the system, remembering the sequence of steps to be taken, inputting which data
and where, and doing updates as necessary. There were only a few calls and that
helped me pace myself, and other than a few frantic moments towards the end of
the shift, I thought I had done a fair job. I'm off from work for a few nights
and so far I haven't received any feedback negative or otherwise, by email or
by phone, so far.
Do I feel a little bit more comfortable with the system now? Perhaps I
do with the routine stuff, I but I still have much to learn about the finer
points of medical insurance verifications, of course how to answer phones in a
tactful, customer service-oriented manner, and how to multitask when calls come
in simultaneously. Lord knows what's going to happen if we don't get paid by the insurance company for a call I took. My boss is probably going to chew me out!.The job is much harder than I initially expected. I remember
back in the mid 1980's when I was working for Tenet Los Altos Hospital, and had
to occasionally take intake calls at night. All we had to do was ask the caller
a few questions and arrange for him/her to come in for a free evaluation during
the daytime, and if he/she came in, I would get an extra $10 in my paycheck.
It's much more complicated now and I hope I hadn't already forgotten what I've
learned so far after a few nights off. Can this old dog still learn new tricks?
