Wasting time

It’s been a hectic week. Returned to the depression-inducing weather of Cumbria on Sunday after the sunny spells of Spain (of which I’ll write about later, won’t do it justice to cram everything into one entry) and without having actually been able to procure proper rest, I’ve been working ‘till 7pm everyday for the past week. Don’t think I’ve even had time to layan my post-holidays blues.

The reason we’ve been so busy is due to the fantastically crap organisational skills of the folks in this hospital who’re in charge of the intake/output of patients. Patients are brought in when there are no beds, and are forced to wait at the discharge lounge ‘till they’re given a bed post-operatively. And if there are no beds, they are just sent home hours before the surgery.

This state of affairs is undoubtedly damaging for the patients – any surgical procedure is bound to put one in a state of anxiety, and after all the mental preparation the last thing you need is to be told that your procedure will be postponed ‘till next month ‘cause someone fucked up the bed allocations. Why can’t they just cancel procedures when they know there’s a lack of space?

The second thing that’s annoying is the fact that we house officers end up clerking in patients for no purpose whatsoever. For example, there were 14 patients who were meant to come in as electives yesterday. They only started arriving after lunch time, and since there were no beds, once again, they were placed in the discharge lounge (which is ironic). The reason we’ve been going home late is ‘cause after 1630, there’s only meant to be 1 house officer who’s on-call, but he was left with a total of 10 electives to clerk in by himself which is illogical. So we stayed back to help ease his burden, ‘cause he’s also meant to cover problems on the ward as well as clerk in the emergencies.

Of the 14 patients from yesterday, about 6 were cancelled for numerous reasons. Which means that whatever paperwork/bloods that were done yesterday were a total waste of time; a drain on resources in terms of time, energy and money.

I don’t quite mind staying back after work to help my colleagues every now and then, but to do it everyday of the week (except today) only to find out that the results of your work was put to waste is plain annoying.

At any rate, I’m glad the weekend’s here. Need a post-holiday holiday! Actually, I just need to catch up with my sleep ‘cause the last time I slept for a good 8 hours without being disturbed was prior to me being on nights. Which is why I’m just doing a day-trip to Newcastle tomorrow, intend to sleep well tonight as well as on Sunday. Need to ensure that I’m bright and not tired out when Sweetie comes over in approx a week’s time.

Am off to help a friend choose a car to buy. I’m trying to get her to buy the new Honda Civic. Will blog about Spain later tonight if I’m not in bed.

p.s. Interesting article here. Echoes my sentiments in a number of ways.