My Shoes Are Loose

Remember a whole year ago when I started my job at St. Fozzie's? I had the DIHL expression a lot and felt like I was playing dress up when I donned my suit and heels every day? I couldn't wait until I could "own" my position and really cultivate some confidence in my job and Chicagoan life.

Yep, I'm back there again. When St. Fozzie's offered me this promotion, I traded in my newbie administrator shoes (broken-in, just starting to feel comfortable) for big, heavy, platform shoes that might as well be a men's size 14. They're huge shoes to fill and everyone is expecting me to fill them gracefully, happily, and quickly.

They're administrator shoes.

So I'm clomping around in my new administrator shoes, trying to walk forward in shoes that are still too big for me. However, I cannot let on that the shoes are too big. It's a sad but true fact, that women who ask for administrator shoes need to be able to walk in them. They're almost always men's shoes and if you can't walk in them, you need to fake it until you can!

Okay, enough about shoes. In short, I just want to die. Then I will get to rest. Just kidding. Well, sort of. Last week kicked my a$$ and I managed to fit 80 hours' worth of work into a week with an observed holiday in it!

I could spell out a litany of what I'm doing but I will probably bore all of us to sleep. I'll keep it short...the eight departments I'm managing haven't been tended to (managerially) in years. The managers of those areas have specific questions, HR concerns, and compliance issues on which I have no idea where to start. I have to figure out their departments and then how to assist them in their issues. I might as well wear the firefighter hat for a while because that's what I'm doing. I also intend to grow these areas and their services and that requires a lot of physician interaction. Oh, and I need to hire two Diabetes-Certified RN's and a hyperbaric chamber technician. Know any of those? Yeah, I don't either.

Another full-time job I have is the physician recruitment and strategic planning side of things. We're in the midst of recruiting a few new primary care physicians and the schmoozing is incredible. And I helped run a strategic planning retreat on Thursday; it was three hours of productive, interactive discussion. But I had to have Jack help me organize the notes on the 13 pages of newsprint generated at the retreat! Now we need to execute the awesome ideas generated from the hospital leadership team.

Finally, I have my huge operational and Lean Six Sigma projects that I carried over from the previous position. I'm still in charge of them and need to see them through to completion.

I feel like I have three full-time jobs. Again, though, I am not complaining. I asked for this and want to continue on this "jack of all trades" path I'm on. So I will slip on my size 14 men's administrator shoes and clomping through another week.

It'll get easier. It *has* to get easier.