transfer

this is ironic.

the patient was seen at the general hospital but his family requested to be sent to the private hospital. after major surgery & 2 days stay in the ICU, they have again asked to be transferred back to the general hospital because of diminishing funds.

herein lies the problem. vacant ICU beds in the general hospitals are hard to come by because of the large number of critically ill patients. so the waiting game begins. it's been 3 days since & still no sign of an impending transfer. with every passing day, the patient shows no sign of early recovery, the family are distressed at the depleting finances, and the doctors and staff hope for news of a vacant bed.

it's the same old story year in & year out.

**this post was drafted in 2015 but the state of healthcare has remain largely unchanged**

going soft

 i must be going soft.

i've been watching reruns of grey's anatomy & and ally mcbeal & there were 2 episodes that got me all mushy.

grey's anatomy : the one where denny suddenly died shortly after he got his heart transplant. lizzie, the intern who fell for him like a ton of bricks, cried buckets. a cautionary tale for health workers not to get too emotionally involved with the patients under their care but denny was such a charmer, even i can understand why lizzie was besotted.  :P

ally mcbeal : billy has been acting strange, what with his blonde hair & entourage of robert palmer type leather-suited girls. as it turned out, he has an inoperable brain tumour. Married to another fellow lawyer, he did confess to his old flame Ally that he still loved her all of his days & with all of his heart. He then collapsed suddenly in court & died. And Ally too cried buckets.

*this post was drafted in 2015 but time has not lessened the impact of death on me*

nothing ventured, nothing gained.

my colleague started private practice the same year as i did in 1997. 3 years later, we moved out & joined different private hospitals. another 3 years later, he moved out again & opened his practice in a shoplot & subsequently expanded to the adjacent lot as well.

his practiced flourished & he could employ 2 specialists to work for him. his 2-floor shoplot even had elevators installed.

everyone knew he was doing exceedingly well.

you'd thought he's reached the pinnacle of his career. behold, the coup de grace......

a Singapore group came over & offered to buy over his practice in a multi-million ringgit deal.

while most of us are contented practicing within the safe confines of a medical centre, my entrepreneurial & far-sighted colleague obviously took the path not taken & that has certainly made a difference.

congrats, my friend, you deserve the success for your courage & vision !!

lapse of concentration

i had a lapse of concentration yesterday.

i was doing an invasive procedure called central venous cannulation, essentially inserting a plastic tube (red arrows) into a vein lying within the chest, when i accidentally punctured the left lung.

this resulted in an abnormal collection of air (yellow arrows) called a pneumothorax in the space between the left lung and the diaphragm. it was potentially life-threatening and was managed by inserting another tube into the chest that provides an escape route for the air pocket into a bottle.

i just think it could have been avoided had i been more cautious. in a way, it was timely that it happened. i've been on a roll lately & this is just the wake-up call needed to remind me of the oath i took at the beginning of my career.....

first of all, do not harm.