Now I am - IST

Since January 9th 2012 I work in IST, that is the Intermediate Support Team.

This means my colleagues and I try to facilitate early discharge, prevent admission, relapse and also have a gate-keeping role for the local in-patient beds.

Working in IST and being a nurse makes me think about all those other –ists that are out there.
Several immediately fall out of Hodges' model:

Human-ist, human biolog-ist, technolog-ist, psycholog-ist, educational-ist, public-ist - for public [mental] health, socio-technolog-ist.

As per the many nodes, edges and dimensions within Hodges’ model being an IST means:

taking the edges off the things that count but 

visiting all the edges

So, yes I am a social-ist too. You have to be working in health and social care:

As you do your bit to deliver safe, lean and yet high quality nursing and social care - engage in discussions about an individual's health care, care placements, care transitions you are also a polic-ist^*. You take the government’s policies, the welfare reforms, the savings, and latest legislation and sell them to the public.

While you do this you try to ensure you are not ageist, sexist, racist, elitist and those many other ists that try to prevail - especially amid chaotic change.


^* Policist is I believe a neologism in English. What I mean is the way that workers on the ground (inevitably) enact health and social care policy, thereby also selling it to the public. There may be a word that fits the Bill, but it's eluding me ...