Seeing Anew

11th August (Monday) - How quick the time flies. It's already the second week of working life. And I finally managed to find my way up and down to the ward and found decent enough food besides waffles with chocolates. Today isn't a dull day but as we all know, I follow the CI on Mondays to Wednesdays. She review back what we have learnt so far. Admissions, discharges, booking appointments, normal documents to pre-op and post-op check lists; to patient's own medications and the basic do's and don't s in a normal ward setting. I can't believe there are tons of patient's own medication that were never taken back. Really, there's a whole carrier bag full of medications that were not taken home. Poor patients. Medicines don't exactly come in cheap, you know.
Then as we were all learning about the basic protocols, a staff nurse asked us whether we want to see a blood taking procedure by the Dr. Now, back in the good old student days, lab technicians were the ones who take blood samples. Here, Dr. are the ones who take blood. Oh yes. SO we were given a clear picture of the procedure. Since it was a blood C + S, it's considered sterile. The Dr. put on his sterile gloves, and performed a sterile skin prep with Povidone mixed with Normal Saline. Povidone stings, that's why it has to be mixed with Saline, especially on open wound. The Dr., er I mean, Professor, was really kind, teaching us and the nurse the procedure, like why he is using a sterile method, and he kept reminding the nurse to tighten the tourniquet as hard as she could to get the blood. Once she got it tightened enough, the Professor insert the needle in and... BLOOD!!! 10cc syringe of beautiful, shiny, crimson, vermilion blood. Then he split them equally into 6 bottles, 2 of which are of utmost importance. Okay, all of the bottles are important.
Then as we got into the room to do a discussion, I was greeted by a blast of cold wind. Then the CI quickly adjusted it to 25 and joked that if it keeps getting colder, I'll end up being frozen. Then she said I probably didn't eat enough. I asked her whether eating a lot of hot and spicy food will make you stand against the cold and she answered, "Eating lots of spicy food has nothing to do with it..." Ha! I knew it. My mom says I don't eat spicy food like curry, asam laksa and chili, that's why I'm always cold. Hmph. I knew it was fake. What my CI meant is... When you eat spicy food in the middle of a cold, your body will be hot for about, say one to two hours, depending how much spiciness you take. And vice versa. Then we were given a list of medicine conversions and calculations to do, to be readied to be handed up on the next day.
Seeing that we are often stuck in the same ward forever, the CI took us to the other end of the ward, which is so much, well, there's no other way to put it, neater, and much busier, fully equipped with sterile item sets and a mini sterilizing machine/oven to sterilize small stuffs like scissors and forceps. Aww, why don't we have it on our side too? The only not good thing is...the power often jumps. Half of the corridor is basked in darkness til the nurses have to carry torchlights, causing a Lady with the Lamp pun, or in this case, torchlight. Hmmm.... tomorrow there'll be talks on documentation and to collect APC points in preparation for next year's license.