At the rate i am going for the new inpatient and ct shift work, i will be down with high blood pressure instead of low blood pressure soon. My temper was very very bad throughout the shift work dealing with the nurses and doctors. Of course, i seldom and should not vent my frustrations on my patients. As much as i tried to refrain myself from being rude and crude, there's just this limit to how much i could tolerate for their demanding requests. Some are nice, they know i am busy and understand why i did not agree to send their patients down for x rays while i still have ct scans to be done. It is totally unfair for the patients to have them wait for me over at the x ray room while i do ct scans. But there are times that i could not help it when they just happen to clash big time when the ct request came after i asked the wards to send the patients down. Then i could not put the ct on hold especially when they are mostly urgent cases. so i just have to cross my fingers and pray that either one came earlier so that i can settle at least one side before the other one arrived. However, that ideal situation rarely happens. For example, last night i happened to have a long case with both femurs and both ankles including borden views for the ankles case. i nearly fainted looking at my uncle's condition. i knew i was going to take sometime to settle the x rays. Then another case came down and patient "sob". Darn.... the nurses were arguing on who to do first and naturally the long case one started to point finger at me saying i wasted her time when she waited for me sometime ago while i was settling my AE head scan. At first, i called her ward, they say they sending another ambulant patient first, how on earth did i know that they actually sent down 2 patients together. How i know the other one is SOB case. They wasted so much time arguing who to do first and scolding me for asking them to come down and waste their time. I blew my top at them in the end. Like only they were the only busy ones in the hospitals. From 9pm to 3 plus in the morning, i had not cleared my bladder, had not a sip of water, i was just working through for that few hours. After that femur ankles case, my arms were sore coz i got so fed up with the nurse going in and out of the room knowing that i needed to help in turning the patient that i gave up opening and closing the door asking her to come in. FED UP !!!!!!!

By about 4 plus in the morning, i finally able to rest for a while, but i was too tired to move already. Wanted to go down AE to help out coz downstairs also busy, Was too tired to move. i just slept a little before another round of x rays requests came in. i really dun understand why there are requests for x rays at 7am when about one half hour later there will be no need to surcharge the patient. just for the simple reasons that docs ordered to be done at that timing. That's simply adding on the patient cost. Patient had to pay more because of that. Is that necessary? That's one of the main reasons why the healthcare cost in singapore are going up and up. All the unnecessary scans too are adding on to part of that too.


( The nurses only see it that i am just trying to turn away the request simply because i was lazy and dun want to do the cases. And i just wanted to them to explain to the patients that at times when they are sent down and i happened to have urgent trauma ct scans, i will have to send the patient back and come down later for the x rays coz one trauma case can take almost an hour. Such simple explanation could save a bit of trouble and patient will not be so mad later if i really need to do that. i also could not control the timing when the ct case will come u too. that's why i dun stop the patient from coming down usually coz i might spend 45 minutes waiting for ct cases with nothing to do. that's waste of time too.)


just hate the healthcare system in singapore...... then again the situation might be the same everwhere else.