Learning about E...

E learning.  The art of staring at a computer screen for up to seven hours on two days, whilst trawling through multiple choice exercises, clicking here, adding information there, reading screeds and screeds of information and, finally, after you've successfully completed your seven hours of E learning in front of a screen, being made to book to go on another two mandatory seven hour ''face-to-face'' courses on EXACTLY THE SAME SUBJECTS...that's what they do to you at Fuckwittery Inc..

Yesterday, a morning in a room resembling nothing less than a crematorium chapel, hung with grey, pleated floor-to-ceiling curtains setting off the fake wood walls and ripe with the smell of new carpet and corporate upholstery, we listened, politely,  to talks on governance, spiritual welfare, hand-washing, charity involvement, Trust values, the Client Experience.  A short break for some tea and a pack of biscuits whilst being bombarded on all sides by Union reps, academic librarians, charity chuggers.  In the afternoon, in an airless room in the very bowels of the building, nine modules (each module containing up to five sub-modules) of E learning to complete; fire safety, health and safety, infection control, corporate governance, equal opportunities, data protection, child protection and preventing radicalisation.  We even learnt how to wash our hands.

Lots of information, probably all of it useful to someone in the room, but certainly not me.  I'm not a clinician - most of the modules were skewed that way.  I'm not even going to be having patient contact.

I thought, as I stumbled out into the sunshine at 4pm, that that was it.  Tomorrow (which was today), I would be starting my new job.

Nope. Today, I spent another seven hours learning E.  Different E, but E just the same.  I had a list of modules to complete.  There were seven.  Within those seven, the modules were LEGION. I lost count, but I practically filled a notebook with aide memoires...

Tomorrow, I have an orientation day.   Perhaps, tomorrow, I'll find out who my colleagues are going to be, and where my desk is, and where the canteen might be, and where the loos are, and where I get a lanyard for my ID badge.  Or perhaps not.  Maybe there will just be more Es to learn. How many more Es can there be to learn?  I'm only in post for six months...