Conversing with Life: September 2006

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Vacation

Bali awaits!

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

The Call Syndrome

~ This is a new medical entity. A never-been described phenomenon ~

It's easy to tell if someone is going on nightcall. One can tell by looking at the person.

Note the following:

The perpetual frown
The furrowed eyebrows
The unkempt hair, which will only become more untidy after the call
The oily skin (only me lah), which is directly proportional to the level of busy-ness
The glasses (no one wears contacts for calls)

The following can be summarised as the pre-call facies, or known colloquially as the 'sian one half' look.

Other than the pre-call facies, the HO will experience the following symptoms:

Depressed mood
Anhedonia
Suicidal intentions (this is a sign of severe disease)
Irritability (especially with ineptness) and inpatience
Muscle fatigue
Tachycardia
Gastric pains (especially when meals are skipped)
Oligouria (secondary to poor intake)

The call syndrome can be categorised into different severities:

It is commonly categorised using the visual analog scale.

The face on the extreme left indicates: mild disease (whereby you get 5hrs of sleep and woken up twice for panadol)

The face on the extreme right indicates: severe disease (whereby the phone does not stop ringing and you have not stopped working - a fair indicator is also when the phone battery falls from 5 bars to 1 bar)

NB: As an experiment: do send in your photos of your call facies to wqleow@gmail.com. I will do a visual analog scoring and predict the busy-ness of your call, for free.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Spinal Nursing

Spinal Nursing:

2 days
5 patients
3 hospitals
1 doctor

Thursday, September 14, 2006

OMG SN

Phone rings while Dr is trying to set a plug...

~fumbles in pocket for phone~

Dr: Hello?

SN: Dr Lioew?

~sighs in exasperation~

Dr: Yes?

SN: The patient needs an ultrasound, someone wrote here that the radiologist has agreed to do the ultrasound.

Dr: The ultrasound report is on the file, I put it there myself.

SN: Oh, you put the report... The patient went for ultrasound already. Ahh... okay okay.

Dr: Humph...

~hangs up phone~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If anybody was puzzled by the above conversation, it's understandable.

Working with SN who doesn't know what's happening to the patients can be extremely tiring and frustrating even.

And I've been getting a multitude of calls like that for the past 2 weeks.

Oh my gawd!

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Transition Phase

"... the transition phase is always painful."

I couldn't agree with that statement more. And I thought hospitals in the same clusters would have similar work processes. Well, I thought wrong.

The last week, (hmm, even this week), has been tough. Not only in terms of coping with the different type of work (medical VS surgical), the different teams (luckily I got a nice team but a horrible list) and also the different nurses.

It difficult being in the new environment, and having to find out where the alcohol swabs are kept. (If I have difficulty finding swabs, you can imagine the problems I face trying to find other stuff).

It has also been trying, especially not being able to go post-call. In fact, I can't even go post-call on time (ie 5pm), instead I can only leave at 6-7pm. That means I'm chronically short on sleep, and that is not fun at all, I can assure you that.

But like any transition phases, it's a short-term thing. Today I finally felt more settled in but I suspect it may take a bit longer before I start to really enjoy the posting.

But at least I'm starting to know my patients and how to manage them. I'm more in tune with the team and every person's nuances. But there's always room for improvement.

So keep working!

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Musings of an Orthopod HO

1) The list is really long...

2) Morning rounds are lightening fast.

3) Discharge planning is very important.

4) I hate it when the team is on take.

5) Every scan is urgent.

6) The nightcalls seem better, at least the passive ones.

7) I have a nice team.

8) It was nice doing my first backslab.

Ortho (surgical) VS Medical...

I'm still not used to the change.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Overwhelmed

Too overwhelmed to talk......

Monday, September 04, 2006

Gagged

A gag order has been given by a higher authority.

Entries with a non-medical theme may be the norm soon.

......

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Change and Inspire

Just as I thought I was getting used to this lifestyle, change happens.

Change is always harder if the present situation is rosy.

But change is inevitable and facing difficulties can make a person better.

Sometimes there's no point thinking about it. It's better to just get it on.

Thank you for the memories, I will always bring them with me.