An awesome opportunity

About a week or so ago, my Unit Manager (Traci) said she wanted to talk to me sometime that day, but she had meetings before and after lunch, try to catch her around lunch time. That was at 6:45am, while she was getting report from the nurses for every patient on 400 & 500 Units. Okay, now I'm thinking "What happened that she needs to talk to me about?" Nothing that I know of. You know the things that go through your head when the boss says "I need to talk to you" and gives you no clue why. Not good.

Well, at lunch I didn't catch up with her, so it waited until about 5 minutes before it was time to go home. She called down to our unit to remind me she needed to talk to me, and I went and hunted her down on the other unit. We went back to her office, which was occupied, she grabbed a paper off her desk, and we went to the med room across the hall to talk privately. Okay, I must admit I was a bit nervous!!

What she needed was to tell me that there's a conference being held at Calvin College by the West Michigan Brain Injury Network on November 20th, and they'd like to send me. Was I interested in going? Um, YES!

The conference is for Direct Caregivers of Brain Injured patients, and is about Life Balance. They're focusing on Vision Therapy, Music Therapy, Physical Therapy and Balance, and Family Perspectives on TBI. I'm very excited about this, especially since I'm the only Aide that was asked to go (that I'm aware of anyway). Spectrum is paying the registration and they're paying me for the day (of course).

I'm reasonably certain the fact that I'd just received a review and had 27 continuing education credits (we're required to have 12) had at least a little to do with them asking me to go to the conference. I know if I was going to spend all that money on someone to go, I'd look for the person that already was going above the minimum for education! This will also have me at the minimum hours for my next review, at least, with the in-services that have been done already. Woo-Hoo for me!!!