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!

so tired...

long time since i feel this tired during on call. think my passive call today was worse than my active call yesterday. it's nothing extraordinary yesterday, with admissions for accidents and head injury, appendix, abdomen pain and, of course, upper gastrointestinal bleeding. done 2 OGDS (stomach camera), 2 operation, see CT scan for head injury and managing pt in full blown sepsis (severe infection). hardly anytime to sit down n rest my legs. but somehow manage to pull through the nite, although didnt get much sleep.
but really, the ward turned into nightmare today. so many admissions in the morning into our female ward. we have 9 elective admissions for operation tomorrow. 3 of them manage to be shifted to second class ward in another ward, but still we have extension of 6 in ward 17( and it is still before 5 pm). pt have to be placed in the middle of hallway and corridor near the toilet. so uncomfortable to both pt and working staffs. then i began my second call by starting a laparotomy case (major case for abdominal injury) early in the morning (w/ my specialist of course) and later have to review pts in periphery wards till 1 pm, before breaking off for a quick lunch and came back to hospital for another 2 urgent OGDS for bleeding cases. my colleague who is active call today started his marathon of appendix in operation theatre since morning. one of the scope i repeated on the same pt i scoped last night coz she bled from the site we took biopsy for tissue study. though the biopsy was indicated, i felt half-regretted for doing the biopsy for her.
i was stucked in the hospital till 5 something before i had chance to go home n took nap of 2 hours, before coming back to hospital to review a referral from medical department. my active call colleague finally came out from operation theatre and hopefully he wont need me to go back to the hospital tonight. the ward was so bad that three of our surgeons took turn to drop by and making sure e/thing is fine.
tomorrow i'm going to be elective operation for the whole day. though i'm not a religious person, but, oh well, God bless me to have good night sleep tonight. :P

dec is marry month!!

attended 2 wedding within this single month! seems like the end of the year is good time to get married. haha. both are good friends of mine n had wonderful wedding ceremony done for their big day. feel happy for them and wish them happily ever after :D

but it also mean a bit loss from my pocket money bcoz of the ang pau.. haha

watched 2012

recently watched the movie in taiping cinema with my husband :) as whole, i think it's a great movie, with so much effort and time n money being put in to give us the ultimate impressive effect. storyline was quite straightforward i would say, as expected, issues of humans' differences bound to be brought up n the ulgy side of human when it comes to life n death situation. i love the part where the ground started to give way n how the whole town being split up and submerged into the sea. the only safe place is the sky! building the ark was impressive too. after watching the movie i actually was a bit worried whether anything would happen in 2012. :P

i'm legally married!

090909, on this day, i signed down my name in the marriage certificate in an ordinary looking association building in Ipoh. witnessed by both our parents, we exchange our rings in elated mood. but seriously, after that day n the mini honeymoon we spent in langkawi n now back to work, it seem there's nothing different at all. not that i'm disappointed or want to complain. i just realized it's a small step forward in our future. maybe the ceremony not done yet, tht's y i feel e/thing is the same as usual. work, eat, go home, sleep, n the cycle go round n round. n we still only can meet up in weekends n holiday.

hope by end of next year, we could really live like a normal couple :P haha.