Losing temper

I don’t often loose my temper. I can whine and be irritated about things but I very seldom raise my voice. Last Thursday I did that to a colleague. I can only say that she pushed me over the edge when doing something at the wrong moment.

Since our youngest colleague went home as she had her baby it has just been the two of us. My colleague’s capacity to take many patients hasn’t been very high and she has never managed to reach the amount of visits that the company has set for us. She has this year but under the steady compliment that it’s too much and that she doesn’t have the time to do things the way she wants. She has been allowed to work extra (she works part time) when she has needed. On the opposite side there is me. I admit that we are like black and white. I have during the last year taken everything that hasn’t been with in the specific areas that she has or the patient has been one of hers before.

Tuesday I talked to a person from the community’s care taker. They were having huge problems with a customer. I didn’t have a time that was suitable for the rest of the week so I booked my colleague, who had the whole afternoon free (unbooked) a few days later. Sent a notice to my colleague, as we has as a routine, to notify her about it and got the answer back that she had had other plans for that afternoon. I didn’t comment on that even if I had a very sharp one on the tip of my tongue.

Comes Thursday, my colleague goes to that patient and when she came back she told me what was needed to be done and handed over the papers to me. I snapped. In my defence I do have to say that I had received that day 3 new patients from the hospital that I had booked on me and two more from our Health Care centres. I yelled at her and grabbed the papers from her.

Later I went and talked to her and found this out:
- The patient wasn’t hers; she had just gone in and judged the means of need. I told her that with that reasoning the patient and the staff around her were to wait for help until April since the patient was our "mummy colleague's". I had during the summer talked a lot with the night patrols boss but I hadn’t met the patient for years, and then I was only there to help "mummy colleague" to lift a bed. As I saw it the patient was hers but that I now had taken care of what needed to be ordered and would do the follow up.
- She thinks I’m going to take over some of her patients which I’m not. I have said that I can help her out. I have before seen to that equipment has been ordered or sent back. This doesn’t sound as much but takes it time. And if I start taking over her patients she won’t have many left. I know that I have said that I have time over sometimes and we are not getting in very much new. This is true. In fact we don’t have enough work if all three of us were working and every woman did what she was supposed to. There isn’t any waiting list and yet it’s our full-time colleague that is home. But perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps helping out means taking over patients.

We also talked about what the company wants and I was clear to her that they won’t, in the situation that is just now, listen to what we say, they will look at what we produce and costs for it. If we don’t produce they will simply see to that more OT % disappears. We simply have to accept that it’s going to be tough at work and if we want to keep our jobs accept it and do the best we can. It’s definitive not going to be easier next year, on the contrary, it's going to be even tougher.

I know I shouldn’t have snapped/yelled but I’m not sorry that I did.

Still, I’m dreading to go to work tomorrow.