Survived Day One...

Well, at the moment you would think I was on one of those propellar planes - there is quite the racket right now and I am on the 9th floor!! I know Ottawa just received some snow - but this drilling sound has been going on for the past 30 minutes.

Okay, anyway - today was the first day of training. It is interesting the topics we are going to be focussing on. Similar to last time - this will be another great learning experience especially now as I look at it also from a trainer's point of view too. Asking myself - am I teaching the new coders or cross training coworkers the correct way? Am I interpreting the standards correctly? I will know more tomorrow as we go more indepth into those topics - diabetes, cardiac, strokes and palliative coding are the topics my ears will perk up on as these are found more prevalent at the Foothills Hospital.

Tomorrow and Wednesday will be the "meat" of our prep work and then the "big" test ALL day Thursday. We will be so brain-fried after that day for sure. Friday we find out if we are "up to standard". I am thinking positive we will all pass. Friday morning is actually the fun part as we go over the 20 case studies, we can see just how "subjective" coding really is across Canada. A good discussion is what am predicting as we state why we coded a different way.

I have seen a few familar faces from the study I did last Spring and of course new faces too. There is one other Albertan (Raymond, AB). I will be heading back to Calgary Friday night and then I should be leaving Calgary Sunday to destination unknown. It is their decision ultimately but I did say that Yukon/NWT and the Maritimes would be the places I would like to go. Surprisingly, there are a few of us coders who wouldn't mind going up North. There will be a conflict as I used to work at the hospital - I noticed that Thunder Bay was one of the 55 hospitals in this study. Oh well - I did get to see my mom at Christmas and I will be seeing my dad at Easter.