update / week 2 question

This week I have been completing more observations in Radiology. There are a lot of departments and a lot of different tests they perform so I haven't seen many repeats yet. I've also been working with the data for the radiology department from January to the present.

Week 2 question:
Denise has had a extern the last 2 years. She has told me she worked her previous extern pretty hard. She assured me that she wouldn't do that to me!

I have been learning a lot though, Denise knows of a lot of programs that I have never heard of. I am working on figuring them out as best as I can!

Week 1 Question

Week 1: What concerns do you/did you have at the beginning of the externship? What did you do or what help did you have to overcome those concerns?

I was really worried about what it was that I would actually be doing and if I would be able to actually complete the tasks that Denise would want me to do. To help with this I just told Denise the truth if I had heard of the program she is talking about and then she would explain or give me papers to read.

Observations, observations, observations

This week I have been following patients. It's amazing how many people a patient meets and how many places they go before they actually get their exam. Since the Radiology Department is getting remodeled I'm getting the current data and figuring out ways that it might be easier for the patient to incorporate those ideas into the new plan.

While following my patients they have gone into up to 3 waiting rooms and had to check in with 2 receptionists; just to get one procedure completed.

I have also followed a lot of the radiology techs to get a feel for what they have to do pre and post test since I'm also looking at the volumes of the machine.

It has been an interesting process so far and I have met a lot of nice patients and radiology techs who are very nice about allowing me to follow.

Start of Project

Thursday I had my final meeting with Chris (in radiology) to figure out what exactly I am expected to do this summer. They are going to be remodeling the Radiology Department in the hospital, we looked at the current floorplans (which have changed a lot in the past few years!). Chris told us which rooms needed to stay in place and which ones she would like to see moved and where to.

What I'm going to be doing is collected data from the current state. So I am following patients from when they check in until when they leave. The reception desk does keep track of when people check in and are finished but Denise wants me to get the Experimental Results versus the Theoretical Results that the reception desk has. So far I've followed two patients and one of the RN's. I'll be doing observations the rest of this week and possibly some of next week before we start analyzing the data.

First Few Days

Yesterday morning I finished all the directions to the main places in Allen from the outside. The rest of the day Denise and I walked to some of those main places and asked them where they send patients a lot. We then wrote directions for those. We're going to leave them as is for now and have some people check that this is how they want it done and then add more later.

I was surprised to see how friendly everyone in the Allen building was. I looked lost quite a bit so people would stop and ask me if I needed help. When I told them what it was I was doing they seemed very happy and excited about it because getting directions from location to location was the #2 thing the staff wanted changed.

I was also able to help quite a few patients find their way to a location when I was out double checking my routes. They seemed excited about getting a print out of directions.

First Day

I had my first day as an Extern at Allen Hospital today. My big project for the summer has not been 100% finalized yet; they are planning on me working on a fast track in the ER.

So today my supervisor Denise had me walk through the building and check the directions she had made up for the hospital. It was great because I really got to know the building! I made a lot of detailed notes and hopefully we can get it on the Allen website soon to help patients get to where they need to go quicker and easier.

Denise has a great background in math and knows a lot of amazing programs. I'm excited to start my summer at Allen! :)