Har Cheong Kai

Don't be fooled by their smiling facies...... Think Chucky!!!!






Can't live with them, Can't live without them
More on the intricate and complex relationships between doctors and nurses...
No! I am not talking about the relationships you see in those Doc/Nurse shows that can only be shown at Yangtze.
I am talking about the working relationship between Docs and Nurses.

Through the years in the hospital, I have met many irritating nurses and those nurses that really have a heart. Most of the nurses that are irritating are usually in the age group that qualifies to draw out their CPFs. Why irritating? For one, they think they own the ward.
"Don't touch my case notes arh! Take already you better put back hor!"
"Who leave the sharps in the dish arh? Never clear, later someone get poked arh!"

Just imagine your own naggy grandmother, now multiply it 100 fold. There you have it.
One of the most "memorable" incident I had was when I as a HO. I was in a famous ward "owned" by the twin terrors namely Susie and Wusie (heard of them even before I stepped into the ward). Well, one day as a solo HO covering the C class ward with 40 patients, Wusie came up to me after the ward round with a huge stack of case notes.

Wusie: "Eh HO, You have to arrange scans for bed 18, 21, 33 and 35. Beds 22, 24, and 31 are going home today and you have to do the summary before they leave. Beds 1 - 7 needs bloods and bed 14, 17 needs an ECG." (In a very high squealy voice that would cause birds to drop dead in mid flight)

I was beginning to spin from the numbers that were read off. Usually I can handle numbers well. Years of training from buying Toto has trained me. But today, there were more than 7 numbers being read out together and I could not handle the load. (Maybe I should change to 4D. More numbers to remember)

HO: "Staff, can you help me to label the case notes with post-it so I can see what I have to do?"
Wusie: "No lar, where got like that one? Flip open and read the notes lar!"
Following that, she proceded to make a telephone call.
Wusie (over the phone): "Eh, bring the chicken down from the freezer hor. Tonight I making Har Cheong Kai"

I was thinking to myself: "WTF, she so free until can call her husband to bring the chicken down from the freezer, cannot help me to label the case notes arh????"
What happened next pissed me off so badly that my head nearly blew apart. She conveniently sat down behind the nurses' counter and started talking with another nurse how to make Har Cheong Kai!!! All the while I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, like the chicken that was going to be har cheonged!!

Well, I managed to finish that day in one piece.

The next evening at 5:15pm, I was officially off duty. But I was so tired that I decided to rest at the nurses' counter before going home. There was a prisoner case in the ward who came in with abdominal pain. As with the policy, patients with abdominal pain are not allowed food in case they need an operation. So after 2 whole days of not having food, the prisoner was making a lot of noise. The policeman guarding the prisoner came to ask Wusie whether the patient can have anything to eat. As Wusie was super busy at this time (Most probably because she had spent the day thinking about cooking Pig's trotters and not done her work), she blew up.

Wusie: "The doctor here, dunno how to ask arh???"
Me (Remembering the previous day's fiasco): "Eh, 5:15 pm liao leh. I am not here leh."
I swear I saw a vein throbbing in her forehead and a vessel bursting in her head. HAHA!

In a more touching note, I remember nurses that really cared for their patients and treated us doctors like humans. It was my first call as a HO. I was totally new and naive. After running around the whole day, I realised that I have not had a drink for more than 10 hours. I was feeling light headed and dehydrated. I was glad when I stepped into the aircon ward and was greeted by this smiling nurse. She was a foreign nurse and looking at me, she told me that I should take a rest. She pulled a seat for me and started massaging my shoulders. Somehow the lights dimmed and someone was blowing a saxaphone..... (Oops, just a hallucination from the severe dehydration). What really happened was that she offered me a seat and went to the fridge to take a bottle of H2O for me. As an experienced nurse, she knows about our hectic schedule and has compassion for the poor HOs. That bottle of H2O not only replenished my fluid loss, it also recharged me to continue on for the rest of the call.

On hindsight, Susie and Wusie were not that bad either, they were just menopausal..... I'm sure they will forever be in our memories (in the post traumatic stress disorder kind of way), and occasionally appear as boogie man in our nightmares.... these evil nurses, hahaha

Last night I dreamt that Nurse Susie came after me for not finishing my discharge summaries!! ARRGGHHH!!!