what an end to what started out as a bloody wonderful week. by the time i left work on tuesday, we had 5 patients in icu. one hadn't even arrived yet. it was about the same on wednesday when we effectively had 3 patients all day. one had gone off for investigations, another was post-op and didn't arrive til afterhours.
with days like that, anything more would be relatively shitty. by thurs afternoon though, it was starting to get a bit ridiculous. we started with a code blue/met call - the guy died after failing to respond to 10min of cpr. what a way to start. the day ended with 2 more codes, each within 5 minutes of each other. both ended up in icu, ready to greet me when i got to work this morning.
that wasn't all that greeted me. we had another code blue within 5 minutes of walking in - the guy's heart decided to go wonky and danced at bullet speed. in the meantime, all the respective teams had come and gone and before i knew it, i had to discharge half the ward today before even getting the chance to start our own icu rounds! of course, things must always go wrong on days when you least want them to... pharmacy couldn't find discharge medication scripts and we ended up writing outside prescriptions for everyone going home. ct scans were done with no results available. patients were getting antsy waiting (for goodness sakes, it was still before noon) and being bloody nuisances. this one guy kept talking over me, pointing at his room door and wanted me to ask the doctor when he could go home. after trying to ignore it a few times, all the while explaining he could go home in another hour or two, i gave up, looked him squarely in the eye and said quite flatly "i AM the doctor." (now will you shut up and listen) would be what was left unsaid. bloody people never listen. i always introduce myself with "hi i'm amy. i'm one of the doctors working in this unit" and most people respond with a hi to acknowledge they were listening. anyway...
the day's come and going.. sucks that i have no break to look forward to - i'll be at work =(
before i go, one last gripe to let loose. i'm pre-empting that i'll offend a few people but frankly.. it's just an opinion. take it or leave it, i say.
and the gripe starts like this...
i check my email to find a link to rsvp to a 130th birthday celebration of rgs, the secondary school i went to when i moved to singapore. i had lots of fond memories of my time there.. mostly of choir pracs and shows. in comparison to my time in junior college over there, i would've much preferred my time in secondary school. that being said, i was quite appalled.. with mild amusement at the program they had proposed. a birthday celebrating 130 years, and they get the current principle to say something, sing the school song, listen to a concert (which will likely be the usual gamut of song and dance with proportionate ethnic representation) and then bellow out some school cheers (what exactly would they be cheering for when most of the cheers are shouted in baritone voices at sporting events?). it all sounded very artificial and concocted. corniness aside, the clincher in my books would be the allocated 1.5 hours after all of that for "conversations and reminiscences" .. which mind you, is completely optional (so why allocate it in the first place when there was nothing else after this optional segment anyway?) did they not think, that with all the independence they've instilled in us through their innovative teaching, that we would have the brains to organize our own time to catch up with whoever we wanted to? seriously, if they had wanted to set aside time for catchups, they could've at least marketed it as the after-party rather than part of the proposed program for the night. and speaking of the program... it's a milestone and yes, they've invited old teachers and principals to attend the function but wouldn't it be a lot better to get them as guest speakers to share their thoughts on how far along the school has come and all that kind of catch-up, rather than fill up the bulk of the night with a concert of random acts?
*sigh* all i could think of when i was reading the program was .."how typically singaporean, to be so regimented that even free time and will needed to be allocated and spoonfed to a population of sheep." i mean no disrespect, but from random conversations here and there with singaporean friends, those with independent thought and free will have gotten the hell outta there as soon as they could, leaving the sheep behind to be sheparded by a group of communists at heart who mask their true motives behind slick propaganda and glib half-truths.
i'd much rather you let me vent and rant and get rid of all the steam that's built up over the past couple of days but if you must, go ahead... may the blasting begin.
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