An overbooked public clinic. A waiting room full of people who had been on the list for months. One man at the desk, aggressive, loud, and telling Terri-Lyn Bailey she was just a receptionist.
A doctor who had been at the hospital a long time walked over and stood beside her. He said she was not just a receptionist. That he himself could not do her job. That the reception staff have their role, the doctors have theirs. Then he slid a complaints form across the desk and told the man he was welcome to use it, welcome to sit down and wait, or welcome to leave.
The man sat down.
This episode is different from the rest of the series. Terri-Lyn Bailey is not a surgeon or a researcher. She started at sixteen behind a pharmacy counter in Bundaberg, Thursday nights and Saturdays, before Sunday trading existed there. Twenty years later she is the person patients speak to before and after the worst days of their lives.
She talks with Kenneth Cutbush about what that work actually involves. Being disbelieved as a teenager and then watching the pharmacist say the identical thing and be accepted. The difference a patient can feel instantly between someone who wants to be at work and someone who does not. Why she thinks you can hear a smile down a phone line, and why she smiles at people she cannot see. Why the person in front of you is the priority and everything else happening in the room is not.
There is a very funny story about a woman denied cold and flu tablets who walked the length of the first aid aisle with her arms out and put thousands of individual dressings on the floor. They were still sorting through the bag on Saturday.
And there is a quieter thread about loyalty, about wanting a decent boss and finally finding one, and about what it feels like when a surgeon trusts you to go down to the ward and speak to his patient for him.
Her advice at the end: be nice to people regardless of who they are, because we all go in the ground the same way.
Chapters
- 00:00 The night an angry customer emptied the first aid aisle
- 01:37 Welcome. Twenty years, starting at sixteen
- 02:21 Behind a pharmacy counter in Bundaberg
- 03:54 Being disbelieved, then watching the pharmacist say the same thing
- 04:11 Leaving a small town for Brisbane
- 04:39 Being the voice for the patient
- 05:26 Getting to know regional patients and their lives
- 05:50 Why medical secretaries have a reputation for being cold
- 08:02 Where the ability to put people at ease comes from
- 08:49 The ones she cannot get to smile
- 09:08 The patient interaction she has never forgotten
- 10:31 "She's not just a receptionist"
- 12:22 Why staying calm defused it
- 13:11 Whether she carries it home
- 13:52 Going deeper into healthcare instead of changing careers
- 16:15 Where the loyalty comes from
- 17:09 What it feels like to be trusted with someone's patients
- 17:47 How to make someone feel cared for over the phone
- 18:49 Hearing a smile down a phone line
- 19:26 The cold and flu tablets, and the driver's licence
- 22:33 The hardest point in her career
- 23:48 The one thing she would have done differently
- 25:13 Advice for anyone considering this work
- 26:13 Being sent to the ward to speak to a patient
- 28:04 Tips for connecting with people face to face
- 29:45 What patients never see
- 30:34 What a good day feels like
- 32:15 The Friday afternoon theatre add-on