Monday, June 07, 2004
1st Day of CPE
Well, I can't say it was all it was cracked up to be. The solitary emotion I maintained throughout the day was boredom. We had to endure a "System Orientation", followed by a "Site Orientation", all day. The first orientation was nothing but corporate bullshit, which I sure is necessary for the hospital to give. But it is completely geared towards new employees, and not summer interns. We are paying ($400) for this working experience. So, we spent the majority of our morning being indoctrinated into all the reasons why Advocate Healthcare Systems are amazingly wonderful, superbly awesome, and constantly exciting. We even got to perform a role play on how a nurse might handle a complaining patient - how informative for the chaplaincy position. Luckily, we were able to convince them we didn't need to hear the section on employee benefits. Then, in the afternoon we went to our "Site Orientation". Now, I had imagined this would be an overview of the hospital campus, but no, it was largely a repetition of the morning session's highlights. We did, however, get a cookie when we were done. Out of the entire day, I'd say maybe 1.5-2 hours of the material was important, necessary, and/or informative for our role there as CPE students. So, it wasn't all boring. Tomorrow we actually begin learning about our program, so that should be more interesting.
The groups are going to be interesting. I know two out of the other four members of my group: another Seabury student and a recent NU grad who is now attending Virginia Theological. The other two members seem pretty cool - one is a middle aged woman of a UCC background and the other is a Catholic from Vietnam. I don't envy Michael his group. In it is the person who complained twice during the orientation session. Once because a single slide in the slide show presentation featured all white males and a second time because a video we watched portrayed women in negative roles. (Which was untrue - the video showed a couple of scenarios of "red flag" situations. In the first vignette it showed a female doctor who was being racist and in the second it portrayed a male doctor giving an illegal order to a female staff worker who was reticent to complying with the order.) Oh boy....you know, I somewhat feel sorry for folks who do this to themselves - they just seem to make their own lives miserable. I understand and appreciate a legitimate complaint or the pointing out of an inequality, but folks who have an agenda just irritate me.
I am looking forward to tomorrow when we can actually learn more about what we will be doing and schedule out our tag-along sessions. Over the enxt week and a half, we are required to do two "tag-along" on-calls. This means we will tag along with a full chaplain as s/he does their rounds during the night shift (5pm-12:30am) and then another time for the early morning shift (12:30am-8am) to sort of learn the ropes. Then, after that week and a half are over, we are on our own! How exciting! How scary! I'm glad to be done with the orientation stuff though and excited to actually do some good work.
-R
Well, I can't say it was all it was cracked up to be. The solitary emotion I maintained throughout the day was boredom. We had to endure a "System Orientation", followed by a "Site Orientation", all day. The first orientation was nothing but corporate bullshit, which I sure is necessary for the hospital to give. But it is completely geared towards new employees, and not summer interns. We are paying ($400) for this working experience. So, we spent the majority of our morning being indoctrinated into all the reasons why Advocate Healthcare Systems are amazingly wonderful, superbly awesome, and constantly exciting. We even got to perform a role play on how a nurse might handle a complaining patient - how informative for the chaplaincy position. Luckily, we were able to convince them we didn't need to hear the section on employee benefits. Then, in the afternoon we went to our "Site Orientation". Now, I had imagined this would be an overview of the hospital campus, but no, it was largely a repetition of the morning session's highlights. We did, however, get a cookie when we were done. Out of the entire day, I'd say maybe 1.5-2 hours of the material was important, necessary, and/or informative for our role there as CPE students. So, it wasn't all boring. Tomorrow we actually begin learning about our program, so that should be more interesting.
The groups are going to be interesting. I know two out of the other four members of my group: another Seabury student and a recent NU grad who is now attending Virginia Theological. The other two members seem pretty cool - one is a middle aged woman of a UCC background and the other is a Catholic from Vietnam. I don't envy Michael his group. In it is the person who complained twice during the orientation session. Once because a single slide in the slide show presentation featured all white males and a second time because a video we watched portrayed women in negative roles. (Which was untrue - the video showed a couple of scenarios of "red flag" situations. In the first vignette it showed a female doctor who was being racist and in the second it portrayed a male doctor giving an illegal order to a female staff worker who was reticent to complying with the order.) Oh boy....you know, I somewhat feel sorry for folks who do this to themselves - they just seem to make their own lives miserable. I understand and appreciate a legitimate complaint or the pointing out of an inequality, but folks who have an agenda just irritate me.
I am looking forward to tomorrow when we can actually learn more about what we will be doing and schedule out our tag-along sessions. Over the enxt week and a half, we are required to do two "tag-along" on-calls. This means we will tag along with a full chaplain as s/he does their rounds during the night shift (5pm-12:30am) and then another time for the early morning shift (12:30am-8am) to sort of learn the ropes. Then, after that week and a half are over, we are on our own! How exciting! How scary! I'm glad to be done with the orientation stuff though and excited to actually do some good work.
-R
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