Bad taste in the mouth

I had a fantastic thought earlier today, surprisingly while scrubbing up for an operation, but NOT surprisingly, have totally forgotten about it now. Must seriously consider idea of hanging a notebook on my neck.

I was oncall last night. Not a drop of rain and in comes four motor vehicle accidents. One was totally unconscious, smelt of vomitus and had bits of kuey tiau, bean sprouts and cabbages hanging off his dark green sweater and it was the first time I saw my colleague sweat (WKY, it's because you are usually the epitome of coolness!).

But anyway, I am feeling bad right now.

It was 7pm and I was still in OT. Felt like I was a houseman all over again. Suddenly my mobile rang, and the OT phone rang. A staff nurse was asking me whether I wanted to do the discharge.

DISCHARGE? At 7 pm? Are you seriously serious or seriously out of your mind?

Firstly, I hate it when the staff take it for granted that I will answer all calls from the hospital, regardless of time and day. Last weekend, I was in IKEA and a staff nurse called to ask me about removing the stitches on the leg of a patient. Hello? Patient mati ke kalau tak buat STO tu??

I make it a habit not to accept phone calls from the hospital outside office hours unless when I am oncall, but it is still disturbing to know they called because, y'know, what if it was something urgent? Heck, that's what oncall people are for!

and the thing I am totally pissed off about is, that THEY actually make me feel bad about telling them off about calling me about minute matters like that.

Secondly, at about half two just now, as they were changing shifts and exchanging reports, I had called EVERY ward and went through all my patients and asked if there were things that needed to be done, i.e. xrays to see, discharges to do etc etc. So, tell me, if I shouldn't be mad if you call me at 7pm to ask me to do a discharge (which wasn't planned for that day anyway!). You had passed over at half two and you couldn't have called me over the next two hours to confirm if that patient was indeed for discharge.

Aargh! Seriously lah!

and don't even get me started on how gobsmacked I was the other day when a STAFF NURSE didn't know how to do chest compressions!