Friday, August 9, 2013

We started at the Loan Cupboard at 8:30 this morning. Diane and I had a pretty good routine going before Sheila arrived. We sent her off to fetch some information from some of the hospital departments so we made very good progress. The regular Friday morning volunteer showed up for work at 9:30 so there were a number of us milling around.

There were a couple of returns that had to be entered into the inventory system. This will happen on a continual basis and I’ll have to check in at the Loan Cupboard on a daily basis for the next week or so. There was much confusion though for the first loan request of the day.

I spoke to a gentleman from Texada yesterday and told him he needed a referral slip from a doctor or therapist in order to pick up a wheelchair. He assured me he would have his doctor fax the referral over. When he arrived this morning no such fax had arrived.

Diane (from Courtenay) was at the desk and, under no circumstances, would she allow a wheelchair to go out without the referral. Sheila scouted out a couple of places the fax might have come to (we don’t have our own machine), but still no fax. Diane was still adamant that the wheelchair couldn’t go out; Sheila was adamant that the wheelchair should go out and the referral could arrive later. The problem was eventually settled by Diane calling the doctor’s office herself and requesting the referral. Of course she had to leave a message because the doctor on Texada doesn’t do regular office hours. Welcome to island life!

This is going to be a problem with the new computerized system. Without a referring health care worker, the system will not allow you to loan out equipment. Sheila is a retired Occupational Therapist but she has let her credentials lapse so she is no longer able to sign referral slips (although I think she has been doing that for a long time).

Perhaps we were all tired, but I saw a few places where Sheila and Diane were at odds. I stayed out of the way and didn’t offer any opinions (although I had some). I think the new system is going to be a problem in that we have generally put patient concerns over paperwork – at least I know I did. The volunteers are not going to be happy if they have to refuse loans to clients because they don’t have the right piece of paper.

We finished the inventory by noon, but I need to go back sometime over the weekend to update our paper system with the new inventory numbers we entered today. This too will be an ongoing task for me over the next few weeks.