Working from home

I don't have enough on site support to be able to work from home often. And my director does not support her tech specialists working from home. It has loosened a bit since covid and I could probably get away with doing it once a week. Especially on Fridays when things seem to be quiet anyway and I can just get caught up on email and paperwork. I like having just that little bit of freedom and I really get a lot done. 

Hello Elham,
I am in a fairly unique role anyway due to not working in the Dept of Pathology. My position is not within the hospital setting. Still I'll share in case I can help.

Pluses for working from home (for me): save 2 hrs a day  round trip to my office on med school campus if I can't find a landing space in a clinic or the nearest campus which is 10 minutes from my house; save $ overall because any reimbursement I can get to drive to 80 clinics I visit comes only after the distance round trip to my office is subtracted; a minor plus is that my med school campus office is on the other side of a wall from a Psych clinic's MD office and I have to have music loud enough in my office to drown out voices. That can be distracting when I'm making calls or working on data/reports. As distracting as the neighbors' dogs barking can be, it's still a win to have more control at home than when I work in my office; and no one just 'pops in'/'sticks their head in' if I work from home so coworker/boss disruptions are minimized. Oh and I don't have to wear a face mask at home to be in the hallway!
 
Minuses include having less robust home wifi compared to redundancy/IT support at work; interference/interruptions which all of us have seen during covid virtual calls (but if you get them at work, remove this minus!); I still have to pay for parking for the campus parking though I am rarely there; I used to get stipend for using personal cell since I use it extensively for work but I lost that due to university cutting expenses during pandemic. I am paying for wifi and personal cell use to not be in an office setting.

Our hospital encouraged anyone who could work from home to do so at the beginning of the pandemic. I have one day a week where I have an insane amount of meetings! These all went to Zoom or Teams so it made sense for me to WAH that day. I don't have a dedicated work space at home and at the beginning of lock down I had one adult child who had just started a new job WAH and two college students who were remote learning. It was a challenge to find space to work! Eventually we got the logistics worked out-my son who was WAH sent up a dedicated space for himself in our finished basement as he was 100% remote. The college students stayed in their bedrooms which left the living spaces for myself and our dog. My husband was 50% WAH  but made sure he was on site while I was at home.

I really enjoyed that day at home. I saved almost two hours of commute time, I did not have any lab distractions and was able to plow through paperwork. We were trying to limit interactions with other hospital workers during this time so it did not negatively affect how I could do my job. Issues that needed me physically could wait one day until I returned. I don't think I could WAH for more than one day per week.

Hospital life has returned back to relatively normal and WAH is not encouraged anymore. However, my supervisors understand there are times when WAH is beneficial and allow me to do so.

Since the pandemic hit I work from home half days.  My counter part and myself split the time in the office.  It works for us to rotate weekly who comes in early and who comes in late.  I have always had remote access to my hospital network so I can get some deskwork done on my days home.  I can do everything from home that doesn't require me touching an instrument or a person.  I really do love it and as of yet my boss hasn't required both of us to be onsite every day so I'm happy.

I was also working half days from home while my kids were in remote learning.  I have had the same experience as Adonica- there are certain things that you have to have your hands on, but much of the emailing/review work can be done from home.  One of the biggest challenges I have from home is trying to work on a laptop vs. my double-monitor set up at work.  I am often working in multiple applications and it helps to have the space to have everything open (e.g. Epic and Telcor open on different screens when reviewing results).  I'm really appreciative of the flexibility during this crazy year!

Colleen, I lucked out with that 'two monitors thing' because my husband had bought along the way a cheap monitor 'in case' for his home computer. HA! Guess who is using it now? ;-)