Getting Paid To Sit Around

In my job as a crisis counselor I have many tasks, most of which come in a moments notice that I need to manage.  This makes for some very interesting days full of excitement and sometimes tense situations...that is when we are busy.  Because I am a crisis counselor I do not have any clients of my own which means I go into each and every day without a single thing scheduled.  This is one thing I love about my job.  I don't have the opportunity to stress out about a particular appointment or worry how I might handle a specific client.  Instead I just go with the flow of the day and manage crisis situations as they come along.

One of the main tasks of my job requires me to go to local hospital E.R.'s and evaluate people there who have either been brought in, or have brought themselves, for suicidal/homicidal/psychotic symptoms and behaviors and then help the E.R. doctor to determine if the person is safe to go home or if they need to be placed in a psychiatric hospital.  When I recommend that a person goes to an inpatient psychiatric hospital, it is up to me to call the various hospital in Oregon to see if they have any bed space available and then to inform them of the reason the client needs that level of care.

Recently I was at one of our local hospitals and I had made the determination that the person needed to be placed in a psychiatric hospital so I set out on my list of calls to find a bed.  Unfortunately, this process usually entails looking at the closest hospital first and then if that gets denied you move on to the next closest hospital, since we also pay for the person to be transported.  So I called one hospital and waited about and hour and a half for an official response that they had no beds available.  Then I called the next one and waited two hours for them to tell me they had no beds.  Finally, I called another hospital and got the client placed after another two hour wait.  All-in-all I was at the hospital from about 1:30pm to 7:30pm and my evaluation of the client to determine placement took all of about 30 minutes. So most of my time was spent sitting in the E.R. waiting on hospitals to call me back, while I can literally do nothing more than to sit there and get paid.  Despite the beauty of not having to do much of anything and still earning money, it can be terribly boring and frustrating.

I do love working in the hospitals and getting to interact with the patients, nursing staff and physicians but the process can be remarkably slow, particularly in comparison to the day-to-day crisis situations I deal with in the office which my team is very efficient at managing.