1 Month Housemanship

I've been in Taiping Hospital's Department of Surgery for slightly more than a month now. I've been through 2 weeks of 6am-12am tagging and 3 passive calls. And through that period our rented house have transformed from just a house to a home.

The Work

I've been told that surgical dept in Hospital Taiping is one of the best posting to be in. And so far, I think it may be so. The H.O.D, specialists and M.Os are nice. They teach what ever they can and tegur instead of marah. But occasionally you do get shouted at. There's a considerable amount of freedom given to H.Os in terms of basic management. You get to prescribe medications and do most of the procedures (as compared to O&G where you cant even prescribe PCM). There's quite a lot of H.O teaching as well, which are very useful.

The workload here varies tremendously. On a good day, u can finish ward works even at 11am. But on a really bad day work can stretch up to 10 pm! The total H.Os in my posting ranges between 25-30. We are delegated to 2 surgical wards, periphery and attachments e.g. ENT, anaesthesiology. Calls are divided into 1st call, 2nd call, 3rd call, passive call and active call.

H.O. 1st call will be in charge of the male ward (18). 1st calls will have active and passive H.Os. Active call will have to be in charge of the ward till morning while passive will have to work up to 12am. Meanwhile 2nd call will be in charge of female ward and periphery (after working hours). 3rd calls will be assisting emergency surgeries through the day.

With close to 30 people working together, of course there will be different characters.

1. The Chipsmores (kejap ade kejap takde): these people will be gone anytime of the day, especially when u need them. They will give any excuse to leave the ward and leave all the work to others.

2. The Boss: these people talk a lot. Direct this, direct that but in the end they don't do part of their work.

3. The Complainers: complain, complain, complain...kalau buat keje takpe but they give all sort of lame excuses for coming late, not doing their job etc. Biasenye takde orang nak layan

4. The Hardworkers: these people work hard. And I truly respect them. They go through great lengths for patients.

5. The Blurs: unfortunately I'm still part of this group of people. Firsts posters. Doing all sorts of mistakes. Kene marah...it really sucks. Sometimes u just wonder why u are in this field of work.

As for nurses, we always have conflicts with them. Things requested not being done. Vital sign monitoring not up to date. Not assisting when we need them to. Sometimes you get fed up but try to be humble with them. They do their job but as human beings, things slip up sometimes.

Its quite late in the night now. My wife is on call at SCN tonight and I'm all alone at home. I'm gonna get a good night rest now. Tomorrow is a new day, new experiences. There's so much more to say but I'll leave it for another night. Maybe I can post some pics too. Till next time, good night :)