Medical Records Coordinator
Addenbrookes Hospital

 Joanne S

00:00:03 I’m Joanne S, and my job title is Senior Medical Records Co-ordinator/Reg Clerk. The job of Reg Clerk is when patients come into hospital they’re sometimes registered twice and so it’s me merging them so they only have one hospital number. I’ve been in my department, Medical Records, for seven years now, and my current job I’ve been doing for just over a year. If people are off sick or we’ve got not – we’re quite short-staffed – I cover their work. I also locate missing case notes within the hospital, so they’re there for their either Outpatient clinical appointments or their ward admissions.

00:00:38 We get notes for patients, obviously sick patients, every day, you know, thousands and thousands of them. But if you think too much about that then it can be sad, but you’ve just got to try and – just be positive, and just realise you are doing something to help these people, and if you end up being sad all the time then you’re not going to be able to do it, but you’ve just really gotta – yes stay happy and positive to do this job I think.

00:00:59 I enjoy the most the freedom actually that we get with our job. We know what we have to do, we get it done, and as well I do enjoy meeting all the people that I have.

00:01:10 You meet a lot of really nice people, but with the nice you also get the not so nice, and it is hard sometimes dealing with people that are angry or just – just unpleasant really. Sometimes we get people’s backs up ’cause they think we’re pestering them but it’s not on ours- you know we do it on the patient’s behalf so that’s quite hard. A lot of people don’t really understand that.

00:01:36 I was at Sixth Form College, and then when I left there I joined the bank here, the employment bank and I was there, in now what we call our Optical Disc Room is where we scan the non-current records onto the computer. I was there for about six months and then they offered me a permanent post, and had an interview for it and I took it. And I’ve been here ever since. I think this is sort of what I want to do. I wanted to do admin, clerical type in the background sort of work, so yeah, this is perfect.

00:02:06 I don’t think I had a dream when I was six, I’ve never really known specifically what I wanted to do. I was never one of these people that wanted to be – I want to be a doctor, I want to be an air hostess or I don’t know, anything, I’ve never really been that specific. I sort of fell into this and it’s really good.

00:02:23 Exams were quite difficult for me, I didn’t get on with revising really, to be honest. But I mean I done well, I’m proud of myself, but I know I could have done better, and I wish I did do better. Well just my friends were more important than revising at that time, but I think that’s what everyone’s like when they’re that age.

00:02:40 Money is important to me, yes. I think it is to everyone, no matter what anyone says, I think money is important. When I started in Medical Records I started off one of the lower bandings, and I have gradually worked my way up, and I would like to carry on doing that. So I would like more money.

00:02:56 Well at the moment I am happy in Medical Records and if a position came up to go higher then I would stay in Medical Records, but I’m quite happy to go in other areas of the hospital. I’ve had a good foundation of learning, and I would like to move to say a different department to learn more really.

00:03:14 I just didn’t realise how big hospitals actually were, like how many different people work in hospitals, and how many people it takes to run a hospital. It’s just – it is just mind-boggling, and how many patients actually come to this hospital – it is just amazing really.

00:03:30 ENDS