Sunday, November 20, 2011 at 2:39AM 
Now, why does the weather always turned out to be much nicer when you were crammed inside being on call? It happened again to me this morning, and the sky was nice and blue all morning, although it later turned cloudy and rained by late afternoon.
We have booked a week break in the middle of December at Sunway Lagoon Resort Hotel and hopefully the would be great then as well .....
Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 7:20PM 
Wow! Can't believe how heavy it rained just now. I noticed some debris were flying near the construction site at UMMC just then, it was that bad. Now the rain has stopped and we were bracing ourselves for admission at the Trauma Center. I will be on call tonight.
But it wasn't half bad actually. Gone were the days when I was on call for 56 hours at a stretch. Gone were the days going overnight without food, just keeping awake on adrenaline alone. At least now I can afford to go home after the evening rounds and expect calls to discuss emergency rather than physically having to be there. Can't complain really!
Friday, March 13, 2009 at 8:08PM Hmmm ... that was I am sure a mouthful. Google the above term, and you'll come to its definition. It is the fear of Friday the 13th. And this year alone, there are 3 Friday the 13ths, today, last month and on the coming November. Why are people friggatriskaidekaphobic? If you count all the months in the last 400 years (that is 4800 months), the majority of 13th of the months actually are Fridays - 688 of them, with Sunday and Wednesdays close second at 687! So Friday the 13th are more common than we think and they should stop making frigging movies out of it!
This Friday the 13th also marked a milestone for me. My first ever day on call as a Consultant. Yes .... after tomorrow 8 am, I can say, been there, done that and worn the T shirt, providing everything runs smoothly till then. When I was a houseman, doing 56 straight hours on duty for the NHS I was complaining of too much work, and that my senior not doing much to help out. Then a year later, being a Senior House Officer (equivalent to Medical Officers in Malaysia), I complained that the Casualty Officers giving me incomplete referrals. Cursing them for not doing this and that!
Promoted to Registrar come with a different job description, and the one I hated most, taking on other specialty referrals! The Surgical Houseman found a lady with low blood sugar, what does he do? Call his SHO, and guess what he says? Call the Medical Registrar. So your job is reduced to taking referrals from other Housemans! Argh! When you turn up at their ward, they did not even bother coming up to you to tell you about the case. They were too busy setting lines etc!
Hey! I am now doing Consultant calls. So what had happened today? 10 am, call from Department. You have a referral, an 83-year-old with a broken hip in the Orthopaedic ward. They were planning to take her to theatre but noticed that her blood pressure a bit high. Had to get a medical consult prior. Presto, that's where I come in. Saw the lady. She was known to have high blood pressure and she was writhing in agony with her hip pain! Imagine how high my blood pressure went when all that needed giving was some painkiller meds ... and may be a slap on the face of who ever decided to call me! Ha!
Time to hit the Casualty floor to see what's cooking then. Wish me luck! And may your Friday the 13th be a lucky one!
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.