New employee trainings.

So, I have been at my new job since Oct. 23rd but I still have some "new hire trainings" that need to be done. It's kinda funny some of the trainings I have to attend because technically I am in the healthcare field. For instance, people working at PNC Bank will more than likely never have a customer approach the teller window and ask questions about HIV or AIDS transmission/testing/and treatment. However, now that I am a therapist for high risk individuals, I have to be enlightened on the subject matter.

So, I went to the training yesterday....ALL DAY. Ummmm...it was from 9-4 and the information we received was given to us all day redundently. I bet we only learned 12 things total that were repeated 87 different ways. The trainer said it was a 12 hour training squashed into a 6 hour training. I don't believe that...I believe it could have been a 3 hour training that they decided to stretch into a 6 hour training.

We had a group discussion type project where we had to order individuals from low - high risk (starting low risk at the left hand side of the room leading to the high risk at the right side of the room).
Some of the people were:
~7 year old hemophiliac receives blood transfusions regularly.
~16 year old just broke up with her first boyfriend.
~35 year old married for nine years.
~26 years old heroin user shoots daily.
~40 year old homosexual.

Pretty much everyone in the training room was attempting to place these people in categories based on judgments in their own head. Everyone was arguing back and forth about "but you don't know if they are sexually active, sharing needles, blah blah blah blah blah". Listening to this made me immediately irritated and angry at the idiocy, judgmentalism, assumptions, and jumping to conclusions nature of some of my fellow trainees.

I raised my hand, made my point about assumptions based on situations that could all be unique because of us all being opinionated individuals and by putting people in little boxes so we can "put them in their place" will not help them to get education on HIV/AIDS transmission/testing/treatment. I stressed the fact that we do not know all of these "unknown and possibly risky behaviors" that are factual to determine their level of risk for HIV/AIDS. This reason is why education and having detailed and specific conversations with the client to help them determine their own level of risk. Apparently it was the right answer for the trainer. She quickly made her point at how usually the training groups would sit there for 20 minutes trying to place these people based on no knowledge of their low or high risk behaviors. Since it only took us about 5 minutes to get to the point I made and have the trainer discuss the reasoning so others can understand...thanks to me, we got to leave 15 minutes early....wow, 15 minutes I spent stuck on the Sewickley bridge in traffic anyway. HA!

Needless to say, by the time I got home...I was ready for a nap and relaxing because we all know that I can't transistion to being at my house with my family members if I am already irritated and angry at the world. It just won't work...it'll just be fuel to feed the fire.

I would like to leave you with this information I DID learn from the training that freaked me out so much so that I will be using my debit card for all of my purchased....forever.

98% of all of our currency bills have traces of cocaine and other drugs on them.
89% of these cocaine and other drug infested bills of currency have HIV or AIDS antibodies on them.
Transmission of HIV/AIDS from money is .5%.
But EWWWWWW, that's gross and think of how many other diseases are on the money and how sometimes you see people put bills in their mouth if their hands are full!!!!!!! Disgusting.

That was my Friday...uneventful and irritating.