Posted by Gates, a booking and registration clerk, has seen a lot of change happen in IWK shared clinics over the past few months. Typically, she and her colleague would book patient appointments, send the letters out, and register them when they arrived in the clinic/kiosk.
But the clinics have changed drastically during Covid 19.
“We now are cancelling all clinics and rescheduling them for virtual and phone consultations. We now change the appointments to telephone consultations, pre-register them, then print up the packages for the clinics doctors to have when they call the patients. When the doctors are finished calling all the patients, we then register them. We have also had added workload since some of our coworkers have been deployed to other departments.”
They are the main contact for the doctors, residents, nurses, and parents on a daily basis, booking for many different services, including plastic surgery, neuro surgery, pulmonary function test, pediatrics (inside and outside clinic). Shared clinics itself sees many other additional services, including urology, general surgery, gynecology and dermatology.
Due to high paper volume and confidentiality, Gates is unable to work from home. But she also says coming in to work keeps her in a normal routine during the pandemic.
“I try to stay positive by keeping busy, spending time with my husband Stephen and my two sons Patrick, Matthew and doing yard work,” Gates says. “Taking the time to make people laugh is the best part of my day, as is knowing that I’m making a difference.”