A Corn Job?

Suddenly, in Dr Og's FB, alot of status say going Fire Drill. Seems like in recent weeks, there have been a spike in the number of drills performed all across the hospitals of our little island! If only I can bring my dog to work, he would be very excited!

Well, there are no dogs in hospitals but there are DOCS. The everyday challenges of life and death are seriously insufficient to occupy the great minds of doctors. In between saving lives, docs are also expected to be involved in operational and administrative duties.

Jay in his corn field

The holy grail for the admin is of course Jay-See-I (pronounced as JCI). Jay is a Bee Kok Kia (from US) and every few years, he will come visit us in the hospital and See (actually more like scrutinize) how I am doing. He will issue you with a certificate if he thinks you are doing things right.

But I think Jay is a con corn man, peer jiat one! Does he know anything other than corn to tell us what to do? No, no, no... In true Americano Bee Kok style, he gets you to produce books and books of standards, protocols and policies and then audit you based on the standards you created. Like that very sinang mah, Jay just make you do the work and collect his million dollars fee after he tells you how terok you are!

Actually like that also is very simple for us, as long as we make the policies easy for ourselves! But how can right? We kiasu, kiasi! We need to SM ourselves with the highest standards. If Jay tells us to jump 5 metres, we die die jump 10 metres!

In the ward...

Medical Officer: Why I cannot use blue pen???
Sister: Bee-coz hor, Jay won't like it.
Medical Officer: But other wards can what!
Sister: You see you see, I photocopy blue ink not clear! Wait sure fail Jay-See-I! And you also cannot use fountain pen bee coz will fade. And you cannot use gel pen because will smudge. And...

Somewhere else...

Staff Nurse (SN): Doooctooor, harder! Yes, deeper! 
Senior Consultant (SC): I cannot tahan liao! (panting) How many more thrust???
SN: Oh Dooctooor, almost there! almost there!

The SC is of course performing chest compression on a mannequin at the Basic Cardio Life Support (BCLS) Course with the trainer who is the SN. Never mind that he is all 70 years old and might collapse anytime himself. Also never mind that he has 40 years of experience in Anaesthesia and the number of resuscitations he has done are too many to be counted. Even more never mind that his trainer has never resus anyone other than a plastic mannequin (and if the SC collapse the SN would fail in resuscitating him).

Why liddat? Because Jay-See-I...

Again, this is all very solid if we can maintain high standards we saboed ourselves with. But oh no... being Singaporeans, we only mug when the exam is round the corner, right? So in the half year prior to Jay's arrival, we suddenly gotta chop our names, write the date and time, use black ink (but no fountain pen), get accreditated for BCLS and of course, there's always the fake fire to learn how to run away from.

Interesting Fact: Fire was a discotheque popular in the 70s. The patrons were all bengs and lians chanting "Fire fire in the sky..."

Tags: Fun, JCI, Medical, Quality