any customer service officer working at a random reception counter can attest to the challenge of providing service to a whole barrage of human equipped with a wide spectrum of emotions. you have angry folks, indecisive idiots, unreasonable pricks, demanding bastards and just plain ol' motherfuckers. now couple this with providing service in the hospital where issues like ethics, morality, life and death and dealt with on a daily basis and you have some hot soup in the boiling. you have to agree with me that this particular bowl of soup is not exactly to everyone's liking. it's actually quite an acquired taste. having to waddle through the mires of emotions that dying patients are put through. in the hospital, it's not so much about whether the room service is excellent or the thread count in the bedsheets, but rather 'will i die during the operation?' or 'how long more do i have?'.

this is perhaps why i find that aside from clinical skills, perhaps it's the Life Lessons that are equally, if not more, important than anything else. two more lessons therefore, before i bore you any further.

3) Seeing the Morality in X-Rays

there are a total of three new preceptees in my section of the surgical ward - Fat Boy Slim, My Preceptee (braces & innocence) and one more whom i have never mentioned before. not because i don't interact with her or anything like that. to put it simply, she's a Plain Jane. i'm really good at seeing the unique bits of people. it could be a mole (i once saw a mole on a colleague's breast; it has stuck in my mind ever since), pen preference (ball-point or gel ink?) or even handwriting. Plain Jane however, eludes me. unless you consider labelling stationary with cutesy stickers of one's name on it to be unique, there's simply nothing defining about Plain Jane. but i kinda like her as a colleague because she's one of the few people who can understand puns.

none the less, she approached me one day with a dilemma. she had a patient who needed to get a Chest X-Ray (CXR) done. problem was, the patient (a female) was fit enough to go down via the whole bed pushed down, but not well enough to go down in a wheelchair. and when a patient has to go down via the whole bed, it's extremely time-consuming. the whole process from the ward down to the radiology department and back to the ward can take up to forty-five minutes. and forty-five minutes translated into ward time, can be used to accomplish many nursing-related tasks. of course, there was the option of calling for a portable x-ray to be done. and when i say 'portable' here, i'm talking about an x-ray machine that can be pushed up to the ward level. it looks rather cool actually. i would love to have sex with a radiologist on one of those machines, if not for the fact that an accidental push of some random buttons would release a blast of electromagnetic radiation and fry my fertility to nano bits.

i've never liked making decisions for people because i already have problems deciding sometimes (should i have the honey milk tea or the peppermint green tea today? and extra pearls? or maybe i should just go home and make a cup of bloody Earl Grey?). which is why i decided to pose Plain Jane a few alternatives as to how she could approach the matter.

'It's a simple problem filled with solutions that involve one's morals and integrity. to start with, you could do it the right way, by faxing your CXR form to the radiologist's and send the patient down via the whole bed and spend a big chunk of time waiting for the x-ray to be done. on the other hand, you could be a bit of an irritant by faxing the CXR form for a 'whole bed' just before the afternoon shift takes over in the hope that they send the patient down instead of you. or even better... if you care about your patient and yourself, ask the patient to act all weak and lucid, put on an oxygen mask to conjure images of pity, and fax for a bloody portable.'

i never got to find out what she did in the end. but knowing Plain Jane, i think she went for the route with the most moralistic returns. if it were up to though, i would have gone for the portable. after all, i'm a person with a deficiency in morals.


4) God Created Chairs with your Buttocks in Mind

i have no idea why but the average staff nurse dislikes taking a seat. perhaps it's the nature of the job which requires a lot of manual labour. i mean, how do you change an elderly's diapers while sitting down on a chair (ask me to demonstrate, i'll show you how)? because of this constant lack of rest for the limbs on the job, many of the older generation of nurses have developed unsightly varicose veins. you know those bizarre-looking bulges that you commonly see on women's legs.

i vividly remember my primary three mandarin teacher was one of those poor unfortunate souls with a very bad case of varicose veins. each time i saw her legs, it was like looking at a giant sea monster fused with a very hairy WWE wrestler wearing a pair of beige stockings ALA robbery style. she neglected shaving her legs, which prolly accentuated all the uneven bulges on her calves. and she wore really ugly stockings, sometimes with holes in them. she was quite the fashion disaster too, pairing those stockings with open toes sandals. so you've got ugly calves, ugly stockings with holes and even uglier footwear. Pixar really needs to make a new animated movie featuring my primary three mandarin teacher's lower limbs. Ugly Feet anyone?

there are of course things that one can do to prevent varicose veins. remembering to occasionally rest one's legs, stretching, etc. falling short of wearing the rather uncool compression stockings which to be all the rage amongst the health-conscious of nurses, i've therefore decided to teach my preceptee the sacred art of sitting down. in fact, i think i'm the only crazy person in the ward who tries to get everyone to sit down, constantly pulling chairs around for people to rest on. and my smart-arsed tagline to accompany an invitation to a chair?

'God created chairs with your buttocks in mind.'

come to think of it, it sounds rather right too when i reverse the order of the chairs and buttocks:

'God created buttocks with chairs in mind.'

it's a bit like a chicken and egg question. which came first? but i digress. there's more to sitting on a chair in the hospital than just health considerations. i've always believed in taking a little bit of time out to sit on a chair and update the patients on what's going on with them now and then. i don't know why, but i find patients friendlier and more open when i sit down on a chair and talk to them. same goes for blood-taking and wound dressing and all the many other clinical skills. before you know it, we're talking like old friends who have known each other for like ever. the only thing missing is the bucket of ice and some Tiger Beer.

---