"Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it." - P.J. O'Rourke

It's been a challenging spring at our house on several fronts. One of them...

Pam is a HUC, a Health Unit Coordinator, on 5C at Del Webb Hospital. Basically, she's the secretary for the C unit on the fifth floor, a 22-bed unit that takes patients who have an ongoing medical condition or just had surgery (aka, med-surg). She sits at a computer at the nurses' station and does things like arrange consults, complete the "paperwork" for admits and discharges, arrange transport for patients going for tests, order the unit's supplies. But her favorite part of the job is the time she spends with patients. As part of the hospital's "satisfied customer" push the HUC's are to go into each patient's room at least once a day to find out if they're satisfied with their care, have any special needs or requests, and basically chat them up. Pam's personality is ideally suited for that and she's especially good with the older patients, the largest portion of those they get on 5C.

Pam has a great supervisor who appreciates Pam's diligence at getting everything done efficiently and on time, but also - maybe even more - her attitude. After 43 years of living with me she's learned to be cheerful and positive even when those around her can be grumpy or stressed. Pam keeps 5C humming smoothly and does the little things that make it a pleasant place to work. Her boss, who is very good at her job, consistently gives Pam the highest ratings on her performance reviews and tells her how integral she is to the unit's effectiveness.

So what's the problem?
It's a 22-bed unit. The corporate bean counters have determined that when the census - the number of patients - drops below a specified level, employees should be either called off before their shift begins or sent home mid-shift. On 5C that means anything below 17 patients and they do without a HUC. Summer is normally slow because of the number of seniors who head north for the season, but this year it started early and has had a more noticeable effect on the 5C census. The reasons are up for debate, but whatever the causes Pam has been called off at least two days of every week for the last six weeks or so. She doesn't get paid much but what she does bring in is essential to our budget, so losing 20% or more of each week's paycheck is...uhm...not a good thing. Her boss has done everything she could to keep Pam on the unit and/or find her substitute HUC work on other units, but that hasn't worked like we'd hoped. We came to the conclusion that the current situation was bad, the long term implications weren't good (why keep a HUC that's only working 2-3 days a week?), and something needed to happen. So two weeks ago Pam started applying for a whole bunch of positions within the Banner Health System, the corporate umbrella for this hospital.

At first nothing happened, and that, too, was discouraging. But we knew this was an opportunity to live out our faith in the Father who sees and provides in his perfect time. Our job is to learn while we wait for that time.

Earlier this week Pam told her boss that though she hated to leave 5C she'd begun applying for other positions within the hospital, and in Banner facilities nearby. Bless her heart, her boss got on the phone to HR and told the director of that department, "You gotta find something for Pam. She's too good to lose." Whether that's the cause or not, Pam has been or will be contacted by three managers in three different departments about jobs, one she hadn't even applied for. The head of HR called to tell her to look at the job just posted, apply, and let him know when she had.

That one is for a PT scheduler on 4A, a rehab unit. Another is for a HUC in the ER, a place where the census shouldn't fluctuate like it does on other floors. The third, and at this point her preferred, is the front desk position at the hospice facility across the street from the hospital. She'd be perfect for that - interacting with patients' families and doing the clerical work for the facility.

She doesn't have a steady job yet, but three good possibilities have us encouraged. Pam has an interview Monday for the ER position and is waiting to hear about the other two, but both of those have given signals that she'll be contacted. We're not counting our porcupines before they've jumped over the moon, and none of these three may be the solution. But after some real concern about our budget there's concrete reason for optimism.

Jehovah-Jireh