jon's blog

Thursday, July 19, 2007

project 355: C.R.I.C.

whoever said being a nurse was all a bed of roses complete with a thousand-thread count bed sheets and 'memory' pillow filled with Bosnian goose feathers, is obviously sleeping in the wrong divan. nursing is one of those jobs that requires plenty of patience, empathy and tolerance, not only for the patients and their relatives, but also for the pay that seems to increase by a minute notch each time there's a revision. when i started work in the hospital in 2004, there was talk of an increment of the nurses pay by 10%. i reinforced to my colleagues then, that it was prolly all codswallop. the body count of foreign nurses in the hospitals back in 2004 was definitely overwhelming the local ones. fast-forward to 2007, the pay for nurses has only upped by a miserly $25 for me. what can i do with $25? pay a patpong boy to undo one button on his shirt? hell, it doesn't even cover air-expenses. for all the effort that the nurses put in and the responsibility that comes with the care of human life, a miserly $1.5k as a starting salary is just not worth it. i could prolly make more money making love, than giving that love away to the patients.

i wish i could say it was the money alone that deters me from nursing but another pushing factor would have to be the Singaporeans. when it comes to service, the locals can be quite an uppity bunch. they demand for service and they want it NOW. their loved ones in the hospital want to pee and they want someone else other than themselves to assist them to the toilet. they absolutely refuse to don a pair of gloves and partake of the cleaning and sponging of their loved ones. they refuse to aid in any part of the health-care process other than the portion that involves claims from the insurance companies and the signing of medisave forms. in fact, i daresay that you'll be hard-pressed to find a nurse with a loved one in the hospital, taking part in any of the above mentioned.

throw in a bunch of complain letters from the patients and relatives that constantly flood the hospital's mailboxes and you have a lose-lose situation. seldom do the hospitals do monetary arrangements in terms of compensation, the complaint has obviously reaped no benefits. disgruntle patients lead to bad reputation and lowered public confidence via word-of-mouth. and thus, an increased spending in publicity and public awareness is required. every time i pass the huge wall posters of the hospital's self-praise, it's like money being pasted on the wall. if not for the very strong adhesive holding the posters up, i would tear them down and make recycled handicrafts out of them.

money and unappreciative Singaporeans. perhaps this is why everybody wants their children to become doctors rather than nurses. the end, simply doesn't justify the means.

just as there are top and bottoms in the gay context, there are also in-charges and juniors for nursing. the in-charge would always be the registered nurse, dealing with paperwork, appointment-making and report-writing on an almost daily basis. the junior position (normally held by the enrolled nurse and sometimes the registered nurse), handles all the physical labor of bringing the patients for baths, sponging, changing diapers, fetching patients back from the Operating Theater, etc. i know of colleagues, who absolutely hate to do junior work because it's exhausting and physically-draining. plus there's plenty of sweat, shit and urine involved. nobody likes to touch their own bodily fluids. what more then, the fluids of others?

it is perhaps in this context, that a new term has been coined: CRIC. derived from the original acronym of CRIB - Complete Rest In Best. CRIB status is given to those patients who are supposed to remain in bed and avoid as much movement as possible. a common example of a CRIB patient would be one who has just undergone angioplasty. i can't be bothered to go into full details so i've provided the wiki page. the main reason for CRIB would be the risk of hemorrhage at the entry site of the angioplasty, normally the femoral artery. and you know how femorals are like when severed, constantly spurting like men in a pornographic video.

CRIC, or Complete Rest In Chair is therefore, our answer for nurses who assume the in-charge position fully. they park their asses on the chairs permanently, answering phone calls and writing reports, constantly saying that they are very stressed. in fact, so focused are they on the reports and phone calls that they have prolly seen their patients no more than three minutes per shift. the in-charge, you see, is expected to help the junior who really has the heavier workload of physical labor. even if they can't be bothered with helping in the sponging and toilet baths, they could at the very least answer the call bells. but do they?

i try to help my junior most of the time. not in terms of cleansing people and stuff of the like, but rather, the serving of food, the fetching back of the post-op patients and serving urinals. not because i'm trying to help, but rather, the ends justifies the means. i serve the diets so that i can scour for any leftover diets that i can make a breakfast, lunch or dinner out of. i fetch my patients back from the op as the theaters are just one staircase away from the roof where i usually smoke. i serve the urinals so that i can ensure that what i write in my report tallies with what is currently on the patient: a drain, a catheter, a peripheral IV plug, etc. little do they know that i'm a selfish bastard with my own intents for helping people.

it's a good thing therefore, that most of my juniors tend to be smokers. because nothing says 'thanks for helping me out today!' better than a free stick of cigarette. one particular colleague is heavily in debt with cigarettes from me because she seldom buys her own fags. most of the time, she keeps her smoking habit alive via a charity basis. every week, she would ask for at least four sticks of cigarettes from me. which is all fine by me because she's the one that's doing all the manual labor while i'm stressing over reports. best of all, she knows that she's indebted to me. all the more encouraged she is, to help me out at work.

truly, the end justifies the means.

posted at 8:44 am by the nurse | Permalink |

7 Comments:

angioplasty... EEEEE! i scared!!!
By Little Prince, at 11:24 pm

Just when, oh when are we going to see your next Fridae instalment? We are getting impatient!
By Anonymous, at 4:01 pm

well.... blessed be we have such selfish nurses. LOL.
but cheerio for that selfishness of yours! :-)
By Medie007, at 6:28 pm

'leadership by example'...that's why we should send our female counterparts for some SAF training!!
By Bone_collector, at 8:32 pm

A lot of nurses of this CRIC problem.

Even if they see you struggling to transfer a pt or updating the charts, they will not lift a finger to help.

They really pissed me off.
By Anonymous, at 9:43 pm

send female for SAF?
WTH

den i think doctors should come up with ideas to put our males to have menses evey month and able to ovulate!
By Anonymous, at 10:49 pm

daniel: angioplasty is bloody useful. and bloody bloody as well. but that's the fun in angioplasty, ain't it?

ah bong: i can't seem to find anyone worth sharing my life with yet. maybe that's why i'm so selfish.

bone_collector: hell yeah. our ladies of Singapore really could learn a thing or two about independence.

foxy: it's especially poignant in the senior nurses. bloody old farts. i hate them.
By the nurse, at 10:18 pm