Monday, August 08, 2011

haematemesis

that's the medical term for vomitting blood.

no, none of my patients is suffering from this, thank goodness! but that was how i felt today. the hokkiens call this feeling "thor huek."

if you've been warded in a hospital, you'd know when things don't go right. they dish out porridge when you ordered western, the medications are served hours late, or worse, omitted altogether, or they have to repeat a test because they didn't do it properly the 1st time. and, your doctor still doesn't know what's wrong with you.

these little glitches become magnified in critical areas like the ICU, operation theaters or emergency department, where a error of judgement, however slight, can make a difference between life & death.

i had the misfortune of being in that position today. the patient was seriously ill but the senior nurse attending to the patient with me was totally out of sync with the situation - not thinking, not pro-active & certainly not competent. i had to give explicit instruction every step of the way & this was a senior nurse who teaches other nurses the tricks of the trade.

i'm just glad i don't have to throw up do this too often. 

6 comments:

stay-at-home mum said...

I just had one of those mornings too - maybe that's why I am anemic!!

doc said...

SAHM,

hope you, like me, are feeling better now.

Yvonne Foong said...

Even though I am not medical trained, but after making the hospital my second home, I can tell when things are done dangerously wrong and the patient's safety is at stake. I blogged about this before when my dad was hospitalized at UMMC.

Unfortunately, the general public was quick to make excuses for the under-performing doctors and nurses. Can we expect the standard of our public healthcare to improve when people don't even mind the mediocrity? The hospital only found out that the cause of my dad's conditon was owed to a blood infection TWO weeks after he was hospitalized. This is definitely a problem, but the public does nmot see it and just accept it.

It meant that the housemen and medical officers and nurses just let my dad lie in a daze for two weeks without feeling concerned for his condition.

doc said...

Yvonne,

expect the situation to worsen when mediocre students get into med sch & end up as the dozens of housemen herded into ONE WARD hoping to learn something.

Jo said...

My kids cause me to frequently "vomit blood" :P

doc said...

Jo,

take comfort - all kids do that to their parents in varying degrees.