Subject(s): Coworkers

Location: Doctor’s office

Monday mornings, everyone shows up for 8am, ready to start their work week just like every other week. Monday’s are always rough in the office, as no one is quite ready for the weekends to be over. In a doctor’s office, everyone needs to be ready for their day. My coworker’s walk into work, a few still grumpy as they haven’t had their coffee yet. Everyone starts their day off slowly. A few conversations about the weekend that has just passed. A few complaints about the weekends. The smell of coffee fills the break room and begins to travel down the hallway. Once the initial Monday blues wear off and everyone has had their coffee, the mood begins to brighten in the office.

It’s a very small office. The staff consists of two medical assistants, one check in girl, one check out girl, two providers, an office manager and a phlebotomist. Each with their own specific personality, after a few days of observation you would get to know each person in a different way.

The office itself is small. Clean, newly painted walls with two small hallways and a total of 10 rooms. The carpets are a little outdated, but the staff has brightened the place up with plants and pictures hung along the walls in the hallway.

If you sit in silence you can hear the constant buzz of all of the constant sounds of the office. Phones ringing left and right, conversations with patients, orders being called out by doctors. If you look around you see many things too. Medical assistants zooming by each other to bring in patients, or to administer vaccines. The office manager can often be seen walking up and down the hallway, always on the move.

Many different personalities merge together in such a small office, everything usually works together in perfect harmony. The office manager, however, is definitely the queen be. She is the glue that holds the mold together. If anything goes wrong, she is the one that everyone turns to. Some days the coworkers may butt heads, but this is to be expected in such a close knit office – tensions do rise from time to time. This is rare, though. Usually, everyone can be seen joking and laughing. The office has learned to balance their jobs without taking them too seriously.

One thing that was observed was how well everyone can work together in an emergency. On one particular day in the lab, a patient fainted. The lab door is usually closed so the phlebotomist has a buzzer that she rings in an emergency. The two medical assistants, the office manager, and the nurse practitioner open the door and see that a patient is on the verge of fainting. Everyone knows exactly what to do. The office manager rushes to get the patient a glass of water. One of the medical assistants grabbed the blood pressure cuff and took the patients vitals, while the second medical assistant watched the patient to make sure the patient didn’t pass out. After assessing the patient and making sure that they were okay, one of the medical assistants took the patient to an exam room via wheelchair and had them lay down until they felt better and their vitals returned to normal.

A doctor’s office is like a well oiled machine. Everything works together in perfect harmony. If one little thing is off in the office, then the whole thing is out of whack. Everyone in this particular office does an amazing job at their assigned task and even at taking on some extra tasks. It’s amazing to see how well a group of people can work together and a happy office environment, even when things aren’t perfect.