A sick soccer player demands to see a doctor before practice.
A baseball player needs an X-ray scheduled as soon as possible.
A dehydrated football player on the verge of passing out requires medical attention.
This, and much more, is all in an hour's work for Eric Beck.
Beck, office manager of UNM Hospital, works in the training room and medical clinic of the University's Tow Diehm Athletics Facility. Monday through Friday and on weekend game days, the 47-year-old resides in a cubicle where he serves as the link between Lobo athletes and their medical care.
"If this were a position at the hospital, they'd have five, seven, maybe 10 employees each assigned to do different tasks that I do," Beck said. "But over here, I do anything and everything. It's just me."
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From the time school starts in mid-August to when it ends in mid-May, Beck works nonstop with holidays as his only break - which he uses to catch up on paperwork.
He arrives at the facility at 8 a.m. to handle indirect patient care before the athletes and doctors arrive. He schedules and moves around appointments, reviews lab results for the athletes, takes care of billing procedures and contacts hospitals to get his patients in as soon as possible.
"I'm a key person in this job, because I know the people at the hospital, and if they know you, you'd be amazed at how much smoother things go," he said. "I can contact all these departments - radiology, ER, nuclear medicine. I have the staff at the hospitals get athletes in faster for the reason that they need to come back to their sport, practice and class."
The doctors and athletes come to the clinic between 1 and 5 p.m., a high-traffic time that often gets chaotic, Beck said. During these hours, Beck checks patients in, does their paperwork, finds out why they're in to see the doctors, and then he determines the order in which the patients will see which doctor.
Beck said the clinic is comparable to an urgent-care facility, both for the way things operate and the stress associated with the job.
"In the medical profession, you understand there's high stress," he said. "Some people handle it well; some don't. Fortunately, I have a consistent personality, and I don't get extremely stressed out. I know there's a job to do, and I do it."
Beck got the job five years ago when he said he needed a major life change. Before that, he was in a UNM office working strictly with paper contracts. After a divorce, he said he was forced to look at life issues and for something else in the world he could do, something that included more personal interaction.
"I took a pay cut just to work with people and work amongst a younger group of clientele," he said. "Life isn't all about the buck."
Now, Beck gets the honor of keeping UNM athletes healthy.
"I enjoy working with athletes because it's a higher-spirited patient," he said. "The drive to become healthier faster is there with the athletes. They need to get back out there."
And when the athletes get back to competing, Beck said he experiences one of the major perks of his job.
"It's an excitement level you don't find in a lot of jobs, and even when our teams lose, you were still part of the game," he said.
