Dreading the calls

The Final MBBS was finally over. At least I can now say that I was involves without being told off. However the results won't be known until Tuesday morning.

I was involved yesterday afternoon, and I was so proud that the performance of the students during that session was better than I expected. In fact it was amongst the beat session I had in years.

The afternoon session however was very trying as it only finished near 7 pm. I got some food, then it was time to do my evening ward round. That was when my mood changed. There were clearly too many patients for the system to cope without making short cuts. Some patient were down in the Emergency Department from the day before as we were not able to clear the beds out in the wards for them quickly enough. Coupled that with the notion that our Casualty was the beat in the country maybe as there were a couple of patients in the hour I was doing the rounds whose family actually discharged the patients from another hospital and got them admitted here even though a perfectly reasonable treatment could have been offered at the initial centre. The sad thing was, the patient came as far away as JB. I thought that was really out of order. Yes, it was a government hospital. But it was a government hospital for PJ. It was not our fault that there were no government hospitals in Subang, Shah Alam, Damansara and Puchong. But I was sure that the system was not designed to cope with family taking their relatives from out of town to fill in our quota!

I felt that I should have been more strict, or allowed to be strict, and insist on catering on the local residents. Those from outside should only be entertained if the we agree to take the patients on upon consultation from the referring units. We just did not have the financial, logistical and staffing means to cope with such unreasonable demand.

Enough rubbing for today as on the whole Saturday have been kind to me. It was time to spend with the family, and I will blog about that in the later entries.