First Human Contact

Hello world! Welcome back!

Coming at you with my second blog post ever, I am here to update you on my life from the past week. I learned a little bit more about the study, but what I mainly learned about was how to work in an office.

Throughout this week, I scheduled the follow-up visits for the patients participating in the First Vitals study. After a patient's initial visit with the doctor where they get a mouth swab and state the drugs that have been giving them trouble, they come in for two follow-up visits. The first one is two weeks after the initial visit and that is the meeting where they receive the results from the mouth swab. Then after that meeting, there is another follow-up meeting which happens 90 days after the initial meeting, so that the patient can take a survey about whether or not the new drug that was recommended to them actually worked better. Since most of the patients who have already participated for the study are ready for their 90 day follow-up, I had to schedule them so that they could complete the study.

First, I became accustomed to the program that the office uses to schedule people which was pretty simple. I had to look at when a patient's next regular appointment was at this office (an appointment for something other than the study), and then schedule a short meeting with a nurse practitioner so that the patient could fill out the post 90 day survey after their regular appointment. So, after working to rearrange a bunch of schedules, I learn that the doctor (Dr. Lalani) did not actually want the survey to be taken on the same day as the patients' other appointments. I do not really know why he wanted it that way, because the way I did it made everything way easier but I digress.

So with this news that I had done everything wrong, I had to make a list of all of the patients who participated in the study and call them so that we could book an appointment with them on an entirely different day. Let me tell you about talking to random people and telling them things that they do not want to hear. It sucks. A lot. The first two patients I called were not very happy. The next seven patients that I called went straight to voice mail. The one saving grace is that I ended the day with a phone call from a very nice woman who was totally understanding so that was cool. I think the key to talking to them is using as many big, complicated words as possible to sound official. I got better at talking to them as I made more and more phone calls and once you hit them with a word like "pharmacogenomics" then they will usually listen. The trick is that you make them think that you know what you are doing.

Well, well, well. Here we are again at the end of another blog post. In short, I would say that this week I learned that I never want to go into customer service. With that eloquent summary, I will once again leave you with a gif that I like. So long!

Oh btw, I did actually get to swab a patient's mouth this week. It was pretty awkward I am not gonna lie. I sat down with Carol and this middle-aged woman who was having problems with her meds. I unsheathed the swab. I stared this woman straight in the eye and stuck her with the swab. And then I just started moving the swab up and down in her mouth, At first, it was gentle. I didn't want to break her face. But then Carol was like "No! You have to really get in there!" So then I started jamming this thing into her gums for like 30 seconds. Both my face and the patient's face were panic-stricken. You could feel the tension in the air. In the wake of the aftermath, I pulled the mouth swab out of her mouth like King Arthur pulling that one sword out of that rock in that one story and I looked back up at her face. I didn't know what to say so I thanked her and apologized at the same time. I'm like "Thanks and sorry for all that". She laughed and we all exited the room. So, yeah. It was kinda weird, but hopefully the next swab will go better.