My husband and I headed to Alcudia, Mallora for our 9th wedding anniversary. It was the most relaxing holiday we have ever had. We literally relaxed on the beach or in our amazing suite and had the best time with one another. Now that we are back and it is nearly July, we are trying to decide what to do with our future.

At work we had a focus group related to returning to work five days a week. I’m not going to lie, but it upset me so much. I work in the office with none of my team. I would literally be in the office to log onto Teams and work online. Not much I can’t do at home. However, my husband suggested perhaps we move back into city centre and maybe that is right for us now.

We need to start making decisions in a post pandemic world instead of staying in the pandemic mind set. Saying this, I still don’t see any benefit of returning to five days a week in the office, but it would be nice to have a shorter commute for 3 days.

We will see what the future holds.

This year has flown by. It seems to be passing more quickly than 2022 and I thought it was going fast!

I have been busy with work and a trip back to the US to visit my parents. They both were ill and hospitalised so I thought I had better check on them.

I’m happy I went back to see them and to know they are doing as well as could be expected, but I am still tired from the trip. Last week, I completed a work required first aid course and this week I’m flying to London for work again.

I have one week at home after this week before my work trip to Dublin. Now, I am counting down the days until my first real holiday of the year. I really can’t wait!

The last time I flew to London, I got this beautiful photo of Windsor Castle. It’s amazing to fly over the castle or along the Thames.

This is a quick trip, but I get to see my colleagues and friends so I’m happy about that!

Today I am flying to London Heathrow for another work trip. I’m in Windsor for the next two day and I’m looking forward to the days out. Travel can be annoying, but I have the opportunity to go to Dublin for work in a few months. Since lockdowns ended, I’ve just been traveling back and forth between Scotland and London. But I have meetings and dinner planned so it should be a quick, fun trip.

I have decided I’m going to write every Tuesday, but work has been chaos so this will be shorter than most. We are back to normal even with Covid running rampant through the UK. I’m still recovering from Covid a few weeks ago, but each day is an improvement from the last.

I also started a Couch to 5k program this week so I am trying to figure out what time of day I want to run. I learned it is not mornings as I refused to get out of bed today!

I think I will try tonight after I check into my hotel.

I have intermittently posted on my blog over the past 8 years. Last night, I was reviewing my post for the past year years and I was surprised by how much my life has changed.

I started this blog when I moved to Australia because nursing culture shock was more intense than regular culture shock.

A bit of background about me. I’m an American and grew up in Pennsylvania. I spent most of my life in Pennsylvania. Graduated from Penn State in 1997. WE ARE… (if you know, you know)

My nursing career started in Labor and Delivery nursing. I worked at a community hospital and a large intercity hospital. I can’t believe at one point in my life I actually wanted to be a midwife, but I burnt out after working in a large Baltimore L&D unit.

I did a stint in College Health Nursing while living in a different state for a year. When I returned to Pennsylvania, I worked in a very busy, very intense cardiac unit. My time in this unit changed my life and the direction I wanted to take my career. It was the first time I was regularly a charge nurse and my first role as an assistant Nurse Manager. I found the role was absolutely a wonderful fit for me. In this role, I blossomed as a nurse. I learned so many new skills which stay with me today.

After spending several years in this role, I moved to a large university possible into a Neurosurgical Trauma Critical Care Unit. Finally, I found my niche! I absolutely loved Neuro nursing. Again, I ended up in an assistant management role. At this point, I decided to get a dual Masters in Nursing and Healthcare administration. Part of my role was to assist with implementation of our new Electronic Medical Record. I never realised how important this project would be to my future career path.

After years at this hospital, I decided I was ready for something completely new. Travel Nursing!

Two weeks after I resigned from the hospital, I was on my way to Las Vegas for my first travel contract. What an experience! I enjoyed my time in Vegas. It opened my eyes to so many issues in healthcare in the US.

After my contract, I moved on to Florida for several contracts. While in Florida, I met my husband who happens to be Australian. We met on Twitter and spoke for several months before meeting IRL in Miami. At this time, I became interested in international Nursing from many reasons, but mostly to spend time with my new boyfriend. He was interested in working in the UK and so was I. I started research and found the UK was revamping their process for overseas nursing registration so they would not be accepting any applications for a minimum of a year. My boyfriend suggested I apply for registration in Australia instead.

I said Yes and without any regrets I started the process of registering for nursing in Australia. The process wasn’t too difficult. I needed to provide evidence of my education being in English and details from my university. My application was sent to Australia in August and in October, I actually went to Australia on a visitor visa to drop off my documents. Finally, in March, I was registered as a nurse in Australia!

I applied for jobs and within 3 days had a job offer at a private hospital in Sydney and my work visa process was started. In June, 2012, I started in the ICU at the private hospital.

My husband and I got married in 2014 and spent our honeymoon in Europe. While overseas, I felt in love with London. Upon return to work, I found out I was volunteered as a superuser for the hospitals new Electronic Patient Record implementation. This truly changed my life. I ended up working very closely with the implementation team and it was an amazing experience. After implementation of the EPR, my mother became very ill. My husband had been in the process of applying for jobs in the UK and had started the registration process for the UK, but it was very time consuming. The process was also extremely SLOW. Four days before we were meant to fly to Paris for our anniversary, my husband received a job offer from a company in The Netherlands. So we made a decision to go to The Netherlands because his visa would cover me as a dependant.

Whilst in The Netherlands, I applied for jobs, but found it difficult due to the language barrier so instead I started the registration process for Ireland. As my registration progressed, I contacted the company which has implemented the EPR at the Australian hospital. On the same day, I got a job offer in Ireland for a nursing role and a job offer in the UK with the Healthcare IT company. Immediately, I accepted the job in London and declined the offer in Ireland.

Now almost 7 years later, I’m working as an Application Specialist and a Clinical Safety advisor at the same company, but living in Edinburgh (I love it more than London!). I’m enjoying this new career and all the new challenges.

Well, I have been very lax with this blog. I used to update very frequently, but at some point, I just stopped.

The last few years have passed at lightspeed. We survived the Pandemic and bought a house outside of Edinburgh. I applied and received Indefinite Leave to Remain and much more recently, I applied for British Naturalisation. This was granted about 2 weeks ago and now I have a British Passport! I never thought this was an option for me, but I absolutely love living in Scotland.

Scotland feels like home now and it feels like we have always been here.

I’ve decided to attempt NanoWriMo 2022. I have not tried in years. I’m up for the challenge this year!

We have returned to the office part time after working for over a year from home. It’s very strange being back in the office. I’m glad to get out of the house, but really miss being at home. It will take quite the adjustment. The company doesn’t seem interested in letting us work from home any longer.

My husband and I celebrated our 7th anniversary a few days ago. We ventured into the Edinburgh for lunch at Dishoom. On Monday, we took a boat trip out to the Isle of May to see Puffins. What an awesome experience. As we were landing on the rock, I got the best news. My application for Indefinite Leave to Remain was approved and I am officially a permanent resident of the United Kingdom.

I’m so relieved and thankful that the stress is completed and I can continue to live in our beautiful home with fear of needing to move next year.

Back to the Isle of May, our boat took us by Bass Rock which was incredible. So many birds!

Gannet seen roosting at Bass Rock

Puffin on Isle of May

Wow, I logged in for the first time in 3 years. I’m still working for the same company, but we moved to Scotland due to my allergies. Since we moved up 2 years ago, I have been so much healthier. My asthma is more controlled and I haven’t been hospitalised since 2017.

The world seems a bit crazy right now. We have been in and out of lockdown in Scotland since March. Gareth and I started saving money to purchase a flat earlier in 2020, but lockdown happened and we were stuck in the flat for 6 months. In July we decided to hold off on buying a flat because my mental health was terrible after not going outside for months on end. Living in the 4th floor tenement flat with no access to a garden was not great during lockdown. After loads of discussion, we decided to hold off until October.

But things change and I was very depressed in August even with lockdown lifting so we decided to start looking for a property to purchase. But we didn’t find anything we liked in the area we wanted to move to. After searching for a few weeks, we decided to expand our search criteria.

On 22nd August, we were booked for seven inspections for different properties. We had pushed to see one extra house at noon because we didn’t want to drive out again. After we viewed the first two places, we were quite disappointed with the homes we did see, but we pushed on and viewed the home at noon. Within five minutes, we knew this was the house we wanted.

After viewing the home, we immediately contacted our Solicitor and cancelled all other viewings.

Now, it’s 2021 and we have been living in our new home for over two months.

I’ve been really lax when it comes to writing lately. I haven’t had the time or energy to be honest. But today…surprise…a bit to spare.

Work has been crazy busy as of late and it won’t be slowing down any time soon. Go lives seem to be occurring on a weekly basis. I’m hoping things settle for a few day over the holiday season, but I think I may be grasping at straws with this wish.

One year ago today, I was at my first go live from this side of it. I have to say, a year on and I still love it. Even when I’m beyond stressed, I wouldn’t change anything. I do love my role.

So many people ask what do you actually do. Well, I’m a Clinical Application Analyst and  while it doesn’t really sound like I’m a nurse; I use my clinical skills on a daily basis.

A typically day for me starts with a short walk through Windsor (I am kind of bummed that I don’t walk by the castle every day like I once did). I arrive at work, log onto my laptop, review emails, and prioritise my work for the day. Of course, similarly to bedside nursing, my priorities often get thrown out the window immediately.

Since I work in Support for a Healthcare IT company, my job consists of helping Nurses, Doctors, Unit secretaries, Medical record staff, and about anyone else who may need to log in and chart or access a patient’s chart. When I pick an “incident” off the queue, I need to determine if this is a system fault or user error. And yes, I have actually used the phrase “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”. Many times at first glance, I figure out that the user is not following the correct process or that they need a little training to get to where the need to be; however if I can’t determine if it’s a user issue, I will try to replicate in our internal environment. Basically, I spend my whole day pretending to chart in order to break the EMR. I have time limits to solve these issues though bases on the urgency of which the incident was raised. If it was raised as an Urgent, I have two hours to resolve this and give the customer a solution.

Some days, it’s very rewarding, I am able to replicate an issue in seconds and am able to raise a JIRA (ticket) to development so they will fix the issue. Other days, I spend hours, days, weeks, trying to figure out what the issue is. Those are the most frustrating and the most rewarding incidents.

I love being able to contact my customer and let them know that we figured out the issue and are going to get it sorted as soon as possible.

Never before in my nursing career, did I even consider Downtime as more than a hassle. But now I understand how important downtime can be to introduce new functionality to our EMRs or to fix a massive issue that as a nurse I may not have even been aware of, but is affect the hospital. Or that downtime may be used to patch a security vulnerability or to prevent a Clinical Risk. Now, I have taken part in Downtime, I’ve completed referencing after patching and ran conversion routines to ensure that the new functionality worked as expected when the system came back up.

Taking this job, put me on a massive learning curve and 18 months into the role, I’m still learning every day. Five years ago, when I moved to Australia, I never thought I’d be running SQL, training Superusers and travelling to sites all over England, Scotland, and the Channel Islands as a normal part of my job. As I look forward to 2018, I hope to expand my knowledge further and continue to grown as an Informatics Nurse. I’m even considering going back for my third Masters Degree…Maybe…I may not be that crazy.

 

 

 

 

 

Four years ago today, I spent my first full day in Australia. Since that day, my life has changed so much. I have lived in three different countries, got married to the love of my life and have changed careers. While Gareth and I play on settling permanently in the United Kingdom, I will not have changed one thing about the past few years.

Our life is incredibly blessed and I cannot imagine anything else. This week, we are venturing to the Cotswolds and to Warwick Castle.