work routine...

occupation: medical officer in Department of Surgery in a general hospital

6.00 am: get up from sleep

7.25 am: leave the house and drive to hospital

7.50 am: reach the ward and start ward round

8.30 am: specialist came and start ward round again; Depending whether in elective operation list or not, need to start elective operation at 8.00 am in operation theatre; if scheduled to perform endoscopy procedure then we start outpatient scope around 8.30 am in day care ward

9.00 am: ideally need to go to clinic and help out seeing patient who come for follow up; but usually there are things in ward which hold us back.

1.00 pm: hopefully can finish the clinic and go for lunch; if doing scope in day care, then most likely we wont have lunch till 2 something :D haha...

2.00 pm: back to the ward to do afternoon round; to do procedures on patients if needed to, such as percutaneous drainage, urgent endoscopy procedure, case discussion with radiologist to get urgent imaging study; thurs evening is the day of choice for mortality meeting, houseman teaching or mo teaching, but due to reschedule if no boss is free to conduct.

5.00 pm: if all things go smoothly, can leave work at time

if our name is up in operation list, then above schedule is non applicable, coz most likely we'll stay inside ot almost the whole day and leave straight for late dinner

if we are on call that day, we receive calls and referrals from everywhere and have to attend patient with emergency condition asap, therefore the above schedule is not applied as well.

during on call...
we received referrals from peripheral hospitals (selama, gerik, parit buntar, kuala kangsar, etc etc... anywhere in the country if patient wants to come to taiping) via phone calls, meaning phone ringing non stop if alot of referrals.

after office hours, we take in phone calls from within the hospital as well, meaning from other departments in the hospital.

we perform emergency operations: some we can do, some only specialist can do

we perform urgent endoscopy, especially in the weekend

we do ward round at night in both male and female wards, ICU, Pediatric ward

we call our second call MO, who is passive call, for help if we stuck in ot and there is emergency case outside the ot that need to be assess immediately.

after on call for 24 hours, we continue working the next time with same routine till all work is done. when reached home, we take quick dinner and bath, then hit the sack for the rest of the night. :)

in between times of the work mentioned, we have to find time to study and read to keep knowledge fresh and updated, coz everyday medicine is changing!