Patience

I had no patience, growing up.   And I had no sense of timing and barged in, did not wait, and just stepped all over myself and other people in my eagerness to complete, do, perform, act.  This hurt some relationships.  But mostly, it hurt me because I did not understand about patience.

All my work life, I felt I needed to produce.  Of course, when I worked in the tobacco fields as a teenager, or the napkin factory as a young adult, I had to keep up with the speed of required production.  I think this conditioned me to know that I had quotas and deadlines and I had to always be busy.

The hardest adjustment I made when I went to work at the prison was to learn patience.  I had to learn to wait on the officer who would unlock one of the six locked doors through which I have to pass to get into my work area.  I had to learn patience until the officer in the "sally port" could pass a key to me through the pass through box. 

I had to learn patience because I was at the mercy of correctional officers who would bring my patients from their cells to the interview room for me to speak to them.  I had to accept that count time stopped movement, and chow time stopped movement.  I had to accept that understaffed areas stopped movement. I had to learn that some officers just were resistant to bringing out patients for interview, and would move papers, avoid eye contact, talk to other officers and in general would not do their job which includes bringing out patients so clinicians can interview them.

Today, I needed to see a patient.  It was count time, and one of the officers was training two new on the job trainees (OJTs) about count time.  I knew it was count time, but as timing would have it, I had just finished the chart review I wanted to do before I interviewed the patient.  So, I waited in my office to allow for count.  Because there were some trainees, it took a little longer and was not quite finished when I did go to the pod. 

Also waiting on the pod was a transport officer.  His job is to escort patients to the infirmary for medical appointments.  He was just waiting at the desk. (He had to wait for count to be completed, also.)   As I stood at the desk waiting for the officers to complete count, he asked me what I needed to do. I responded, and he repeated my need to the other officers just sitting there, letting the OJTs and their monitor do count.

This transport officer is one who is appropriate, polite to staff and offenders, always does his job well.  He is always helpful, always prompt to respond, and will even help bring out patients on rows where he is not assigned.  He also has a good, appropriate sense of humor and is in general a nice person to work with.  Except some officers think he is too helpful to clinical staff. (Isn't that sad? I mean, that is large part of their job.)

I thanked him for running interference for me today. (He has done this before for me.)  I told him I was waiting for count to clear, and I could see it had not.  He acknowledged that and said he knew they were far enough along to bring out the patient I needed to see.

We engaged in a discussion.  I told him that the hardest thing for me to learn when I came to work at the prison was to wait.  That it was okay to wait, and sometimes, expected that we would wait.  He acknowledged and said it was also difficult for him to learn. He commented that all of his previous jobs were productions jobs where you had to be busy all the time, and if you were not, you had to learn to look busy all of the time.

I told him that learning patience was a blessing for me, because I have learned to transfer that skill to my "outside" life, and the quality of my life has improved.  I am able to relax, let things take their course, and recognize when I have done all I can do and I need to let time pass as it needs to.  He told me he, too felt that his personal had improved because he has learned to be patient. 

It is not often that I get to engage in a philosophical discussion with a correctional officer regarding something other than "this patient does not need to be here."  I enjoy the kind of philosophical sharing I did today regarding patience.