My Working Day:Despite it being a stressful, high-octane job, Tony Canavan, general manager of Mayo General Hospital, loves it.
As general manager of Mayo General, my role is a varied one. I am responsible for everything inside the four walls of the hospital, including the day-to-day management of all the staff working to deliver acute services to the people of Mayo.
There are 342 inpatient beds and a staff of 1,400 serving a population of 126,000.
I try to be as organised as I can and like to have a structure to my day. I spend about a half an hour first thing every morning clearing my e-mail inbox. My duty manager also gives me a quick briefing each morning on how the night went.
Then I have meetings with department heads within the hospital and with internal committees on everything from capital projects to infection control and hygiene. I also spend time meeting patients and their relatives once a week or so to listen to any complaints or concerns they might have.
About midday I try to catch up with general administration such as returning phone calls and dealing with correspondence. I usually have a 20-minute lunch in the canteen before returning to my desk.
There's not enough time for me to walk around the hospital every day but I try to fit in time every week for a walkabout of the key departments such as A&E, outpatients and medical assessment. The hospital is managed department by department, but I think it's important for me to be visible and to talk to people.
Some days, I attend regional or national meetings in Dublin, Galway or Sligo but I do my best to stay at base as much as possible.
It's the nature of the job that anything can happen on any given day. One of our neighbouring hospitals had serious technical problems recently so we had to make arrangements to take some of their patients.
I have been working in the health services for 14 years, but what I particularly like about my current job is the immediacy of the work. If I make a decision in the morning, I will know by that evening if it is the right decision.
If we don't do a good job, it has implications for the patients who come in the door every day. It is a stressful, high-octane job, but I think general manager of a hospital and particularly of Mayo General is the best job you can have.