Monday, December 13, 2004
Minimum wage warrior
Okay, today I was on for over thirteen hours. I just knocked off work not-so-long ago, and my grand plans to sign up with Fitness First have gone down the drain. The last op turned from a 3 hour monster into a 6 hour epic, and my legs have gone to jelly.
Whinge, whinge, whinge. My fellow medical officers have worked out that we're being paid less on a per-hour basis than mcdonald's staff. This is merely an interesting observation of course, since we are clearly not in it for the money, and doctors deserve to work long hours since they knew it would be tough when they signed up for it. These opinions are actual quotes from previous forum articles which managed to sear themselves into my brain. Back then, I protested on principle from my comfy-chair in the United Kingdom, on behalf of my silent colleagues an ocean away. Right now I'm in the hot seat, and what gets me is why the doctors aren't putting up more fight. I can only hazard that they are too exhausted to bother to hold their heads up.
Rant mode on.
Anyway, I just thought I'd be utterly unoriginal and write that sleep-deprived doctors are not safe, and it is a bad thing for doctors to work 36 hours straight with only 3 hours sleep in between. You the public may think we deserve it, since we were stupid enough to sign up for a supposedly astronomically-paying, highly prestigious job. In truth, we think that you the public deserve better, and safer healthcare, but if you're going to flog us to death then it's your own bleeding fault if we accidentally decapitate you during an operation to remove that ugly wart from your nose.
Cough. Rant mode off.
Anyhow, a pretty weird thing happened over the weekend. One of our house officers got into a car-accident and has been admitted under the care of her own team. That's just... plain weird. I would so hate to be in her situation.
*****
In other news, we "assessed" the house officers today, which involved giving them marks out of ten. I couldn't help but feel a sense of disquiet as everyone smugly intoned sevens and seven point fives out of ten. It seemed so utterly pointless, and rather... inhuman to rate them with numbers, instead of words. Too... clinical. You are seven point five, and she is eight. She is better than you, and She is the best of the lot.
Frown.
Does it really matter? Each one of them, reduced to a mere number, is one of us, one of our own. Part of the fold, with his or her own dreams and hopes for the future.
I couldn't help but laugh along, however, when one of the girls (the looker of the lot) was pulling seven point fives and eights from the predominantly male crowd, and the only female consultant rather petulantly stated "that's because you all think she's pretty!" and proceeded to give her a substantially lower score. Women. Meow. Heh heh heh.
It was a bit like Hospital Idol. Heh heh.
*****
It's amazing that some people get upset that I occasionally slag-off Singapore.
I call it as I see it. I see good and bad things about "home" (the way the mist comes off the forests after a rainy day is quite pretty), yet somehow I am only supposed to write about the good things, because apparently I am slagging off "their country".
Mm, last I checked, it was my country too.
If we can't laugh at our own country, then who can? And if we can't slag it off... well, that just makes us sad, defensive, insular twits.
And I refuse to be a sad, defensive, insular twit. We're Singapore, not Communist China. We may not be West, but we aren't quite that East either.
*****
Speaking of East and West, here I was thinking I'd managed to adapt pretty well and localise my accent and mannerisms, when V had to go and burst my bubble and tell me that I really sound like I'm just "passing through" and that I "don't have a Singaporean accent at all" (har? is it? where got. don't have lah!)... I feel so deflated now. I mean, it honestly takes effort you know. Nabei.
Whinge, whinge, whinge. My fellow medical officers have worked out that we're being paid less on a per-hour basis than mcdonald's staff. This is merely an interesting observation of course, since we are clearly not in it for the money, and doctors deserve to work long hours since they knew it would be tough when they signed up for it. These opinions are actual quotes from previous forum articles which managed to sear themselves into my brain. Back then, I protested on principle from my comfy-chair in the United Kingdom, on behalf of my silent colleagues an ocean away. Right now I'm in the hot seat, and what gets me is why the doctors aren't putting up more fight. I can only hazard that they are too exhausted to bother to hold their heads up.
Rant mode on.
Anyway, I just thought I'd be utterly unoriginal and write that sleep-deprived doctors are not safe, and it is a bad thing for doctors to work 36 hours straight with only 3 hours sleep in between. You the public may think we deserve it, since we were stupid enough to sign up for a supposedly astronomically-paying, highly prestigious job. In truth, we think that you the public deserve better, and safer healthcare, but if you're going to flog us to death then it's your own bleeding fault if we accidentally decapitate you during an operation to remove that ugly wart from your nose.
Cough. Rant mode off.
Anyhow, a pretty weird thing happened over the weekend. One of our house officers got into a car-accident and has been admitted under the care of her own team. That's just... plain weird. I would so hate to be in her situation.
*****
In other news, we "assessed" the house officers today, which involved giving them marks out of ten. I couldn't help but feel a sense of disquiet as everyone smugly intoned sevens and seven point fives out of ten. It seemed so utterly pointless, and rather... inhuman to rate them with numbers, instead of words. Too... clinical. You are seven point five, and she is eight. She is better than you, and She is the best of the lot.
Frown.
Does it really matter? Each one of them, reduced to a mere number, is one of us, one of our own. Part of the fold, with his or her own dreams and hopes for the future.
I couldn't help but laugh along, however, when one of the girls (the looker of the lot) was pulling seven point fives and eights from the predominantly male crowd, and the only female consultant rather petulantly stated "that's because you all think she's pretty!" and proceeded to give her a substantially lower score. Women. Meow. Heh heh heh.
It was a bit like Hospital Idol. Heh heh.
*****
It's amazing that some people get upset that I occasionally slag-off Singapore.
I call it as I see it. I see good and bad things about "home" (the way the mist comes off the forests after a rainy day is quite pretty), yet somehow I am only supposed to write about the good things, because apparently I am slagging off "their country".
Mm, last I checked, it was my country too.
If we can't laugh at our own country, then who can? And if we can't slag it off... well, that just makes us sad, defensive, insular twits.
And I refuse to be a sad, defensive, insular twit. We're Singapore, not Communist China. We may not be West, but we aren't quite that East either.
*****
Speaking of East and West, here I was thinking I'd managed to adapt pretty well and localise my accent and mannerisms, when V had to go and burst my bubble and tell me that I really sound like I'm just "passing through" and that I "don't have a Singaporean accent at all" (har? is it? where got. don't have lah!)... I feel so deflated now. I mean, it honestly takes effort you know. Nabei.
