anyone and practically everyone who has worked in an organization will be able to understand the dread of an incoming audit. well, practically everyone... except the head honchos who invited the auditors in in the first place. suddenly, everyone (especially one's supervisors) are striving to keep the workplace environment neat and tidy. everyone is practicing the proper techniques of doing things. paperwork seems to be more elaborate. and the dress codes are so much more appropriate. of course, dress code is very dependent on the workplace. i know of a gay pal whos workplace encourages a shortened and tightened dress code during the period of audits. yeah, i know. the things we do for our organizations...

it's a juxtaposition then, that an organization can push its workers for increased productivity and quality work, but at the same time wants them to conform to the time-consuming international standards regulated by a governing board. once again, we're back at the good ol' debate of quality versus quantity. a matter of practicality against standards. all this really makes me frustrated about being a cogwheel (or if you're demanding for this post to be gay-related: a cockwheel) in the machine. i mean, it's not like any single employee of an organization is clamoring for an audit in the first place, no? so what's a blue-collared gay person to do when faced with the impending trial of an audit?

that was what i was put up to during the previous fortnights when my supervisor picked a few of my colleagues and me to be the representatives of the ward for fielding questions from a bunch of JCI (Joint Commission International) auditors. we were officially labeled by everyone as the 'Champions'. of course, 'Champions' is a very loosely used term here. i never wanted to participate in the great hypocrisy, but i think i was selected because i was perceived to be eloquent enough after the supervisors heard me yak in the Inter-hospital Nurses' Clinical Research Debates. and thus began the training.

we were grilled about hospital policies. we were infused with protocols. we were even trained to reply with the 'appropriate' answer (NB: appropriate, not correct and very far from being practical). there was a free-flow of food and air-conditioned settings and very comfy sofas while we sat around and went through a list of 101 common questions that the JCI auditors would ask. i fell asleep most of the time though. come to think of it, i felt a bit like a medieval damsel, all of a sudden treated like teenage royalty. but unbeknownst to this little lady, she's actually a virgin sacrifice meant to appease the Goddess of Farm & Crop Growth. ironically, the Goddess is up in the celestial palaces laying waste to what's left of her virginity.

i think the only good thing i've gained from this whole fiasco is a clearer understanding of quite a few of my patients. normally, the registered nurses in Singapore don't really have a clear picture of what's going on with their patients. they glance through the case notes, picking out the important bits of information and basically neglecting the minute details. not only do we have to do this for one patient, but for all twelve other patients that we are taking care of. for this period of audit, the supervisors reminded us to go through all our patient's past medical histories because the auditors (i think she was trying to scare us here) would 'pick up any patient's file and just ask you what operation he went for 20 years ago'.

well, here's the ironic bit. the auditors went around the whole hospital ransacking everywhere for bits of non-compliance. they selected random wards to audit and thankfully, they decided to neglect us this once. thus was i spared from the impending wrath of my supervisors if i unexpectedly garbled in my speech while i answered the auditors. a few days later however, this cheap and very cheesy shot at publicity appeared at the hospital intranet's mainpage:



frankly speaking, it's quite a cheesy comment, what with eating off the floor in the hospital. but it's prolly one of those jokes that one of the auditors thought was funny and decided to share it with everyone. and of course, the hospital administrators and the staff gave big hearty laughs over clipboards, jovial smacks on the back and a momentarily relaxed atmosphere. it was truly, a conditioned response, coming from the auditees.

ball-carrying, i say. ball-carrying.

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