by January 2023
with thanks to ” Longhairedgit ” for the most excellent “bird with apple” photograph. I really like the clarity with an almost harsh focus on the two subjects along with the lesser focussed background. The composition of the photograph remains clear though and the eye is drawn back to the subjects time and time again.
Work:
2022 was full of surprises in many areas and my workplace was no exception. I started there in October 2021 after moving house in the summer and had taken on the (quite small) orthopaedic department as part of a larger clinic with heart, lung and musculoskeletal patients. Things had stabilised alright by mid 2022 and I was quietly considering perspectives and the future. Then a senior colleague went “awol” without any warning right after my short camping holiday in the summer. A colleague from internal medicine and I took on the extra challenge of trying to help guide the clinic through not terribly easy current conditions. It has not been an simple task because we needed to find a new way forward for the medical department without a trodden path to follow. We needed to find clear lines for areas of responsibility and also learn to observe them.
Things have now settled down after about 5 months into an easier rhythm. Focus is now turning forwards towards future structures for the clinic and the sub-departments. It is actually rather interesting having more to do with planning and administration of a clinic and seeing how decisions are made, although I’m glad that I still have a reasonable amount of my work-time in contact with the patients.
There is still plenty to do:
- Continue working on “organisational development” and restructuring of the clinic to meet future needs
- Start on planning renovation/rebuild project for the clinic with staging of processes
- find new medics to build up a younger and dynamic team
- reorganise the medical team with a view to creating an additional unit for “behavioural rehabilitation”
- modernising and simplifying internal processes
Politics:
There was a burst of political activity in autumn last year which was mainly to do with preparing the political agenda in Hesse for upcoming elections and also the same in Bavaria in preparation for upcoming elections here in 2023. There was a certain amount of travelling involved, many zoom calls and some long evenings trying to get my head around various policy ideas. The election programme for Hesse is now pretty much ready, the Bavarian one is nearing provisional completion. In a moment of weakness I agreed to become a candidate for a regional political body (Bezirkstag) so we shall see what comes out of that.
Otherwise, I’m still involved in various political groups with focus on health and social issues at state and federal level and am trying to be as involved as I can manage at the local level. The greens seem to be making slow but steady forward progress in Germany at all levels of government and it will be interesting (and important) to see how this develops over the next few years.
Family:
I try to keep family things out of the blog but, on the other hand, my family is the most important part of my life above all the above mentioned points. The kids have settled in well at their respective schools after the move in autumn 2021, found new friends and new areas of interest. My wife has moved out of clinic management but is still doing research, teaching, think-tank work as well as finally getting her license to practise psychology and giving seminars in organisational psychology so we’re all busy and have plenty to do 🙂 .
Other things:
I am hatching plans to get a week freed up and take off with the motorbike. The plan is still in an “early stage of development”, that is, not much more than a few lines on a beer mat but I hope to get as far as Salers in France and stay at a place there called:
I am toying with the idea of dropping down from here to northern Italy and Turin then crossing the French Alps to Provence then across to Salers. It’s a bit of a way for one week so will have to think about it and plan a bit more in detail…
Geological map of France:
