Betrayal

Usually i try to steer my conversations away from unhappy stuffs. I don't like to carry these unhappy feelings and unload them in other people's mind. Let the trouble be mine and my own. No one likes an old bus with a trailing toxic fume that suffocates.

But i haven't felt so angry for a long time that i need to vent. And i can't pinpoint what was it that pissed me off.
I wasn't proud of myself.

I thought i had a firm control on my temper, that i can take all kinds of shit. These 4 months in A&E kinda reinforced my belief, seeing all sorts of people and getting all kinds of insult hurled at me. I had so far maintained this zen-like smile (my imagination anyway, haha) rather effortlessly.

I never got worked up by whatever scathing comment i had gotten so far, since most of them were either intoxicated or completely out of their mind. I didn't in any way identify with the labels, and i didn't suspect in the faintest likelihood that they could be right anyway. I could laugh them away and frankly, i probably did not get that many of them anyway.

I raised my voice at the patient's family today. Tsk tsk, extremely not skilful.

The patient (himself quite apologetic) had been waiting for 3 hours for a bed, but unfortunately bed situation in my hospital after the chinese new year period has been like a bad drought. The family requested for an update, and soon started raising their voice at me as i approached the reason for the delay. Despite reassurance that we were doing all we can to comfort him in the interim while waiting for his bed (and the busy inpatient ward MO), they were unhappy that the nurses were unable to secure a bed sooner. As soon as i told them that post CNY a lot more patient had showed up en masse, hence the bed crunch, they accused me of giving them an excuse.

How the hell is that an excuse? (I said, that's an explanation! Aghast!)

No you are not giving me an explanation, you are giving me an excuse!
They were relentless. They weren't listening.

I should have recognised that earlier. I should have just kept my mouth shut and act dumb. But i kept trying to drill some sense into them, to no avail.

In the end i found myself with boiling temperature blood coursing through my body, and my ears must have been red like a chimpanzee's ass.

How the confrontation ended i could not remember clearly now. I guess it was Ramizah who came to my rescue, diverting some of their firepower.

Why are people with absolute no idea of hospital's logistics so liberal at throwing their judgement about a hospital's seeming inefficiency? Does being family to a patient grant you the right to misbehave and boss around?

'Why are you raising your voice at me?' I said it in the calmest possible manner. What i got was 'i am not raising my voice at you' in an increasing high pitch and amplitude, and the whole observation ward was looking at us.

I guess what i felt was betrayal. That caused the anger.

Why do families turn their back against us healthcare worker who are trying to help the patients fighting against our common enemy, the diseases and sufferings? Aren't we supposed to be in the same team? (I was foolish to think so, guess i am not jaded yet)

I stayed back for almost 2 hours after work to sort out my patients, and all i got are these lousy people who don't appreciate what we are doing, threatening/deciding to AOR but have no pride to stick to their ill-decision to the end. Even have the cheek to ask the nurse to tell me they want to stay anyway in the end, and to cancel AOR.

We are all trying our best, why can't these people just make our hard work a little more pleasant/easier?

*The saving grace is that i can recall at will many more angelic patients who genuinely appreciate our sacrifice and makes all these self -denial (of pleasures) so palatable that i won't mind doing it till all my teeth fall

**What do you expect? Life's like that. Didn't you read the fine print when you sign on?

(Warped) Logic

An angry patient on why he was kicked out from an allied health providing unit, allegedly because he wasn't liked.

Patient: I guess i know why the nurses don't like me. 'Cause i don't like to talk to ladies.

Colleague: I think maybe your (explosive) tone plays a bigger role.

Patient: But you see, at home I also talk to my wife like that; how can these women expect any better?

Me and colleague: ...

What Kind Of Service Is This?!

'Oi!!!!!!!'

An irate family yelled at the top of his lungs and launched into a tirade of abuse against the nurses, exasperated that despite his mother's call bell rang twice, there was no one attending to her bursting bladder.

Nevermind a nursing senior tried to placate him and had apologised profusely, he became more abusive in language. A young nurse saved the day by bringing in a bedpan, averting a potential major disaster where the patient floods the entire emergency room with her huge volume of urine produced over the eternity of last 30 minutes (a nurse attended to her barely half an hour ago), drowning those who had the misfortune of devoting their life to medicine and nursing in the emergency room, along with the other patients...

'WHAT KIND OF SERVICE IS THIS?!'

Folding his arms and flushed with anger, he majestically glared at the healthcare minions that scrambled at his roar.

I had the misfortune of being his mother's attending doctor. But that did not stop me from being indifferent. I walked away to see another patient, to save a life potentially, rather than getting tangled up in PR mess.

Some people are just impossible.


How do you rate a hospital's service?

What is the benchmark that you judge the quality of your hospital experience against?
What, really, is your expectation of an emergency department?
What, do you make of nurses?

Dear friends, please bear in mind that a hospital is neither a restaurant or a hotel.

A hospital's primary purpose is to care for the sick (all of them, which in a busy emergency department like ours, amount to at least 500 patients a day), and when resources are adequate, secondarily we try to keep everybody happy and satisfied while at it.

Contrast this to other major service industries where customer satisfaction takes a whole lot more importance. Theirs are industries revolving around expendable needs and luxuries, where they are free to outprice low-income segments just to afford the level of services expected of them.

Hospitals just cannot afford to behave like hotels, restaurants, or airlines.

Consequently, nurses are not there to serve your every fancy and need at the flick of your finger like waiters or bellboys that subsist on your goodwill and tips. Theirs is a profession to serve sick people in need. Caring and tending to people with genuine health issues is their calling.

They are not your butlers/waitresses/cabin crew/cleaners/janitors. So do not expect the same service from my nurses.

Your average waitress doesn't wipe your bottom when you lose control of your asshole, does she? She probably will scream at you, get disgusted, and throw you out of the door.

Your average hotel concierge won't entertain you if your wallet is bone bare, save checking you into a room. Money comes first, your need will only be met as much as your credit limit allows for. Nurses don't give a fiddler's fart about how poor you are. As long as you are sick, you are their patients.

So if you want to boss around, go to Resorts World. If you are sick and you still want to boss around, try private hospitals.

However, if you end up in a government restructured hospital, please remind yourself that we are spreaded extremely thin with limited resources, and we have no choice but to do some serious prioritization all the time. In another word, we decide what is important and gets our attention first, not you. Some tasks will just have to wait, within reasonable confines of course.

We cannot attend to a bursting bladder and a blocked heart with the same urgency just to keep you happy. You cannot afford to have us do so too. Think about it.

So what kind of service is this?

HEALTHCARE SERVICE. Thank you.

I Will Never Look At Deodorant The Same Way Again

I have seen many similar XRs before but little did i suspect one day i will have the fortune of seeing one myself.

So far, i notice a unifying theme in their presentations.

It's usually a fall landing on buttock.
Somehow there's a cylindrical object of considerable girth that happens to be sitting upright on the floor at the point just where the anus will eventually end up at.
Somehow the cylinder stays resolutely still in the face of a crashing asshole, rather than tumbling aside as i would expect.
Somehow the cylinder has such a smooth entry into the rectum that there's absolutely no evidence of external injuries/tear around the abovementioned orifice. I mean, we are all a bunch of tight ass-ed people aren't we?
And sometimes, somehow, after retrieval of the object, there's a condom sitting over the top of the cylinder that the patient conveniently forgets to tell you about.

Come on, just tell us upfront what you were up to. The cylinder may look like a rocket, but it definitely isn't a rocket science to figure out.

Honesty is the best policy. My sympathy takes a free fall down the vertical cliff the moment you try to convince me of the plausibility of the above Somehows.

Random #1

Time and again i will log into this blog and reminisce about the days that i was actively churning out posts.

I love writing, love letting ideas flow effortlessly from my mind to my fingers typing frantically away at the keyboard. The rhythmic clicking of my keyboard now kinda excites me.

Recently i have been thinking about resuming writing here more and more.

It strikes me hardest when i was returning from Penang after my brief Chinese New Year holiday. The moment i boarded the plane, looking at the plastic smile pasted over the cabin crew faces, i was awashed with emotions. For the umpteenth time i am leaving Penang, i still feel the reluctance. I want to put these feelings into words, immortalising it, so that one day i can return and read what i felt, checking it against what lingers on in my memory.

We forget all the time. We whitewash our past since we were first born. It's our inherent nature.

I want to remember today as it is, and be able to relive the moments from my writings.

I guess this qualify as an emo post. Haha. It's almost 2am now and i am having insomnia.

It's Been a Year!

Haven't written anything for the last one year. Honestly i wasn't so busy with housemanship, but there just wasn't time to sit down and write in my leisure.

Maybe i will return to writing more prolific-ly soon. So long

Just for Laughs #11 - These Kids Are Really Damn Brilliant

You've gotta give it to them. I wish i had the foresight. 

12-Year-Old Boy Scouts Volunteer To Give Women Breast Exams

And yes you can also see how dumb mass media can be.