Week One at UPMC Children's Hostpial

My first week at Children's Hospital has passed and it has been surprisingly busy. As expected, the gross room at Children's Hospital receives a multitude of specimens related to pediatric and children's issues. If you can just imagine the types of ailments that commonly afflict children (appendicitis, tonsillitis, etc...), then you will have a firm grasp of the types of cases to expect. Nevertheless, it is always the more unusual cases that stick out in your mind.

My first impression of the laboratory was, "Wow! This place is really well built!" The lab is the most spacious lab that I have ever seen. All too common, labs are crowded with narrow corridors and there is little room to move. Not so at Children's. The hallways are the largest I have ever seen and the distance between each bench is fit for a king's reception hall. It makes working in the laboratory much less claustrophobic. On top of that, the facilities are all new, clean and have a professional look to them. I'm very impressed with their facilities.

It seems that almost every laboratory that I go to, the pathology laboratory is relegated to the basement. It makes sense from a cost perspective, but there is something psychologically dour about heading "down" to work as if one is entering into a dungeon. I very much enjoy nature and being inside all day makes me a little restless, so at least during my lunch break I try to get outside and get some fresh air and sunshine. I suppose that if I want to work in a ergonomically pleasing zen-like work environment that is attuned with nature, I'll have to start my own laboratory.

Thus far the PAs at Children's Hospital have been easily available for my questions. Since this was my first week, my questions basically consisted of things like "Where are the plastic buckets?" and "My key card won't give me access downstairs. Could I borrow yours?" So far so good. The dictation system for "voice over" has been mistranslating a lot of my words and the PAs are still helping me with it. It seems that the voice over system for UPMC doesn't understand my words as well as when I was training at Ruby Hospital. I certainly hope that my future work place uses a software that easily understands my words. It can be frustrating when you need to spend more than half of your time correcting mistakes due to the incorrectly set software.

This Friday there is another monthly test that is coming up, so I'll be busy studying for that. It seems that employers don't really care about your grade in graduate school so long as you have the graduating degree. Nevertheless, for my own sake, I'll still be studying as much as I can.