Maternal and Child Health Professional: 

Two three hour sessions. So you know, sort of 9-12 in the morning and 1:30-4:30 in the afternoon. So that’s all clients. In actual fact you very often work through part of lunch time so there would be another probably half an hour there added that would be added to that in the morning and in the afternoon you might even go til 5 o’clock. So you know, it would be 6-7 hours a day of contact time with clients. Admin, we have half an hour allocated in the morning, half an hour in the middle of the day and half an hour at the end of the day. In actual fact it doesn’t fit into that, so very often you work over time and you might do another hour or even two or if things are really bad up to three, you know, it just depends. But you try and keep it under control but it’s not always possible.

I suppose the nicest part of the day is when you have a client that you really enjoy with kids you really enjoy and it’s just nice to see them and share some time with them really. That’s probably nice and that’s probably easy. Maybe just sitting and staring out the window at the end of the day and having a bit of a recollect is ok. 99.9% of the time it’s ok, but every now and there is somebody that you just don’t do the right thing by or they’re feeling a bit vulnerable at the time and you don’t pick up on it. It’s actually a very privileged relationship because you’re allowed into that family, it’s almost like you are a part of that family for a certain time.

Another sort of difficult or stressful thing is when you get the ‘yes, but..’ mums that tell you something and you’re sort of giving advice but you’re not getting anywhere or they don’t really articulate their needs clearly. And very often they’ll ask you something and it’s not really what they want to know and you go into this sort of lengthy exploring of all this stuff and working out something and they’re not really taking it on board and then it’s not til later that you find out that really there was some personal problem with them and not the baby. So those things are a bit tricky or frustrating.

When I first started out I worked at Dearling with a very professional nurse, I did my clinical practice with her so when I was relieving if I had some tricky things I would ring her. But now I’ve been in the job so long usually people are ringing me. If there’s something I can’t tackle or that I’m unaware of I often say to them I’ll do a bit of research for you, which may mean ringing around to see if somebody else knows who would be the most appropriate person or who would be an ideal allied health professional if you like, that might suit that person or if it was some childcare or whatever. If it was a health problem I might get out the Nelson Textbook of Paediatrics or we’ve got the bluebook on infectious diseases so I’ll just say to them hang on let’s have a look at this and we’ll go through it together. I’m not afraid to say I don’t know something. At the end of the day I just sit and look out the window for a while and wind down and reflect on the day a bit, before I go home. I don’t really want to write it down, I usually unload on my husband, he’s very good at saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ at the right places or sort of feigning some sort of interest. He very often provides some gratuitous advice which is not always appropriate but never mind.