The storm is coming...

Katrina Tour
Originally uploaded by jeku arce

Oh boy. It's that season again, hurricane season that is.

I've been notified that I'm on a list to deploy with the 115th CSH out of Ft. Polk, LA to support FEMA in disaster relief, mainly hurricane disaster relief for the next couple of months.

I found an article today predicting just about how many hurricanes will be produced by the Atlantic Ocean:

The Atlantic storm season could produce as many as 14 hurricanes this year, the U.S. government's top climate agency predicted on Thursday, setting the scene for potentially the most intense season since 2005.

...Three to 7 of those could be major Category 3 or above hurricanes, with winds of more than 110 miles per hour (177 km per hour)

Oh boy. That's a lot of potential for some serious damage.

This will be a good chance for me to have some humanitarian mission time, but I have to be ready to roll in 72 hours after I get the call. In the meantime I'm getting all my papers together, making a readiness plan on who's taking care of my car, my place, and making sure the wills are sign, sealed, and delivered. Stuff can happen anywhere and anytime. As the 2nd Reg Dragoons say, "Always ready!"

I'm not too bummed about having my fall plans suddenly changed, I feel worrisome about making any plans. I talked with my ward OIC about this and she told me to just live as if I didn't get this notice. She also said you can't predict what's going to happen, but you can't put our lives on hold waiting around for this. Go on and live.

So I shall with the words of wisdom given to me from my ward OIC. I have training C4 in Sept and the Joint Forces Trauma Management Course in November. I have some plans to take leave as well. I'll stick with my plans, but remember this important word: flexicute (to be flexible and execute when stuff happens.

[Up to 14 hurricanes predicted for Atlantic storm season - Via Yahoo News]

The scheduler

I am officially the person to see about one of the most talked about subjects on the surgical floor: the schedule.

The hand off was done a couple of weeks ago as the former scheduler is going to be moving to a different floor after her maternity leave. I thought it was weird that the "new guy" to the floor was given this role, but I like it.

My role on the surgical ward as scheduler is to make sure we have enough staff to take care of patients. On the weekends and holidays we won't need as much staff, but I found out our busiest days seem to be Monday, Thursday, and Friday. The weekends aren't as busy, however we do get some soldiers flown in for surgery.

I also handle pass forms, leave forms, as well as making sure the nurse residents get their day/night off of their conference day once a month, planning training days, and making sure people rotate every 3 months from days to nights with special circumstances noted of course.

I feel a lot of responsibility with this position, but more importantly I see how now my role plays into the hospital's mission in taking care of patients. I knew as charge nurse on 4S medical/telemetry we would have some days where we would have more staff than others, but never really understood how that happened. I also know now that there should be no reason for me to call someone in because the schedule should be a set for the number of nurses for a full patient load. Gets me wondering now why we float our nurses to other units (other than someone calls out or a soldier goes to sick call)...

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Nurse's week is over and so is the hospital's Spring Formal! What a busy photo week. This weekend I was able to finish sorting and editing all the photos. Today I went in and uploaded the photos onto our intranet website so everyone could see them. COL Fiorey talked with me during the Spring Formal about the pictures I was taking. She said she saw me at all these different events, but never got to see my work. I was puzzled because I've been passing around CDs of different events that I've taken to people who volunteered me to these events. That got me thinking about putting it on the hospital's Sharepoint site. Now everyone in the hospital can see stuff.

In the next couple of weeks before I go on leave, I'll be posting pictures from different events that I've done at the hospital on the Sharepoint site. This should be nice to hear everyone's input and see what I need to improve on as a photographer.

And no, I didn't take over Joe's spot as photographer. He's still working in the PAO. We bump into each other time to time and at different events.

I leave you with a teaser from the Spring Formal last week. I still have Nurse's Week photos to put up too! Stay tuned!