This post was written on 16/06/2024 from notes that I published as a draft on the blog on 19/05/2024.

For 1.5 years, from November 2021 to February 2023, I consistently worked at Burwood HealthCare as a receptionist. I observed a number of things from my time there which I found interesting.

My own doctor practises tat the clinic and I found it interesting how she could work from home when she had covid - which back then, was still a big concern. It is interesting that how the doctor’s own work life balance fits in with their lifestyle - if the patient got the time wrong, the doctor feels obliged to fit it in. Some doctors are much more generous than others in this regard - and this where it is important to set boundaries between work and life.

It is interesting also how many of the patients are quite close to their doctors - having established the doctor patient relationship over sometimes decades - but can never really be friends. Their doctors often know them better than any other person in the world - sometimes even their partner - and it is this which builds up the sancticity of this relationship. A breach of trust in this regard could be devastating.

I also developed some interesting skills from my time working consistently as a receptionist. For example, I developed a skill of being able to guess which name on the Medicare card the person who had presented it to me was - which often related to the age demographic of the person. I also tried to guess the relationship of the next of kin - whether they had a partner, or whether it was a sibling or child - based on things like how they dressed, how they spoke and who they came in with.

Finally, I could guess whether someone wanted a receipt, a bag, or not, when I worked at Chemist Warehouse. Factors included how old someone was (older people tended to want receipts) or how big the purchase was (larger purchases were more likely to want a receipt).