Tuesday, November 23, 2004
I was dying inside...
Shrug. Dunno why I chose that title either.
Currently extremely sleep deprived. I've mentioned that to atone for my sins of being registered late by the SingaMediCouncil people, I'm doing a one in four rota of on calls.
I wasn't really fazed by that when I saw the rota - I was expecting to work hard, and often.
What's hitting me hard now is the fact that there is no post-call rest period in this !!$*ing system - not for the first month anyhow, because apparently we have to learn how to be good MOs. Sleep, apparently, gets in the way of this.
So chugging along (and I mean crawling, rather than chugging) on 3 hours of sleep in 48 hours was rather unexpected, and 9 hours of sleep in 72 doesn't quite make up for the deficit either.
I can barely contain my enthusiasm - thursday, I go on call again.
*****
You are what you wear
It's amazing how spinelessly adaptible I am. Working in clinic today, I hit a speed bump when I saw a gentleman with an extensive and complicated history who'd had almost every scan, scope and blood test in the book thrown at him for a vague history of intermittent epigastric abdominal pain. The year's prescription of omeprazole (written up as... some fancy brand name. Apparently Singaporean doctors are simply incapable of generics making ward rounds a real frustration for me) and magnesium trisilicate hadn't done much for him either. Floundering around within the depths of his (! clinic!) notes to try to get a handle on his condition, and what had been done, and the results of all his tests, the man whipped out a results sheet for a urine screening he'd had done at the National Krookid Foundation (a charity fund for die-lysis patients that occasionally secrets money into improving their administrative staff's working conditions) which he'd gone to "for fun", and his urine protein was slightly elevated on dipstick.
I stared blankly at him for a moment before slowly and carefully explaining (which is the way I start boiling over silently) that this was a surgical clinic, and that perhaps it would be a good idea for him to see his GP for further investigations, and if need be a referral to a medical clinic, since, you see, we are different types of doctors...
Oh nono, apparently I have to investigate, because attending the out patient department will keep him waiting.
Uh. huh.
Well, before I really did boil over, I stopped to reflect how amazingly paranoid we are of litigation here, and how little there is in the way of "cover" from complaints, and then I intrepidly opened my mouth and caved in. Of course we can investigate it for you, but why don't we concentrate on your bowels right this instance, get up on the couch and let me stick this proctoscope up your bum.
Sigh. Somewhere in me, my sense of ethics is stirring, but it's far too exhausted to actually wake up.
Currently extremely sleep deprived. I've mentioned that to atone for my sins of being registered late by the SingaMediCouncil people, I'm doing a one in four rota of on calls.
I wasn't really fazed by that when I saw the rota - I was expecting to work hard, and often.
What's hitting me hard now is the fact that there is no post-call rest period in this !!$*ing system - not for the first month anyhow, because apparently we have to learn how to be good MOs. Sleep, apparently, gets in the way of this.
So chugging along (and I mean crawling, rather than chugging) on 3 hours of sleep in 48 hours was rather unexpected, and 9 hours of sleep in 72 doesn't quite make up for the deficit either.
I can barely contain my enthusiasm - thursday, I go on call again.
*****
You are what you wear
It's amazing how spinelessly adaptible I am. Working in clinic today, I hit a speed bump when I saw a gentleman with an extensive and complicated history who'd had almost every scan, scope and blood test in the book thrown at him for a vague history of intermittent epigastric abdominal pain. The year's prescription of omeprazole (written up as... some fancy brand name. Apparently Singaporean doctors are simply incapable of generics making ward rounds a real frustration for me) and magnesium trisilicate hadn't done much for him either. Floundering around within the depths of his (! clinic!) notes to try to get a handle on his condition, and what had been done, and the results of all his tests, the man whipped out a results sheet for a urine screening he'd had done at the National Krookid Foundation (a charity fund for die-lysis patients that occasionally secrets money into improving their administrative staff's working conditions) which he'd gone to "for fun", and his urine protein was slightly elevated on dipstick.
I stared blankly at him for a moment before slowly and carefully explaining (which is the way I start boiling over silently) that this was a surgical clinic, and that perhaps it would be a good idea for him to see his GP for further investigations, and if need be a referral to a medical clinic, since, you see, we are different types of doctors...
Oh nono, apparently I have to investigate, because attending the out patient department will keep him waiting.
Uh. huh.
Well, before I really did boil over, I stopped to reflect how amazingly paranoid we are of litigation here, and how little there is in the way of "cover" from complaints, and then I intrepidly opened my mouth and caved in. Of course we can investigate it for you, but why don't we concentrate on your bowels right this instance, get up on the couch and let me stick this proctoscope up your bum.
Sigh. Somewhere in me, my sense of ethics is stirring, but it's far too exhausted to actually wake up.
