The pace picks up...at least for a wee while


Well the pace did pick up albeit a little falteringly at the start of this week. There were some well-publicised issues with appointment letters which meant that Monday morning was eerily quiet while by late afternoon there were waits of up to an hour to get jabbed. Nevertheless everyone was seen and we saw numbers in the 7 and 8 hundreds at the start of the week although that did drop down to the 5 hundreds later in the week. It looks like we should see at least 5000 this week just as we hear the rather disappointing news that supplies are set to diminish over April. It’s a shame, as we are staffed and geared up to deliver some 6 to 7 thousand vaccination per week and throughout April we will presumably only deliver a fraction of that, I would guess with more of a focus on second vaccinations. Staffing wise it should be easy enough to cut back as about half of our staff at capacity are on bank contracts and there will be few bank hours available over April.

The atmosphere at the hub remains very positive and upbeat with the wide range of staff we have available all working, supporting and interacting well with each other in no small part down to the calm, efficient and confident clinical leadership and site support staff. When problems arise there is a real collaborative enthusiasm to find a way to resolve them either temporarily if necessary or permanently by preference.

My shifts this week have mostly been as a vaccinator which is the role that most of us want to do. It has the greatest level of satisfaction and interaction with others on site as well as with the largely mostly hugely grateful vaccine recipients. This week included the vaccination of a vaccine skeptic. It turns out that one of the pressures that a skeptic finds hard to resist is a non-skeptic and very insistent partner.

This has been a busy wee week as I have also been preparing for and undergone an interview to potentially become a panel member for Children’s Hearings Scotland (www.chscotland.gov.uk). I had thought that my interviewing days were behind me so I was rather rusty but I did it and will hear the outcome in a few weeks.

Next week at QMU our full time clinical lead is on a well deserved break so both my shifts are as set to be as acting clinical lead.

                                                      


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