Friday, February 26, 2016

Unreasonable People

26th February (Friday) - People often say T.G.I.F., but for my case, it's never a good thing when it's Friday. It drives me nuts half of the time. And today especially, it's the worst.
Around 9, we got a patient whose PEG tube is needed to be checked by our doctor, okay, we pushed the patient in, knowing our doctor will come in after he sees his patients. The family, two daughters plus a maid, carried a lot of baggage with them. The moment we brought them into the room, the two daughters demanded my friends and I to remove the dressing. We can't, because the doctor isn't here yet, but busy with his clinic. If we were to remove the dressing, and it takes an hour for the doctor to arrive, it wouldn't be clean.When we explained that to the daughters, they gave us really nasty looks. When you had dealt to many people with these kind of attitudes, you kinda developed a sort of thick skin against patients.
The minutes ticked by rapidly with no pause, and our doctor still haven't arrived yet. The doctor finally came after an hour or so, and he asked us, "Why didn't you all open the dressing yet?" Actually, we were already on standby with our gloves and everything, but the two daughters had to snobbishly go, "We asked them to, but they refused." Well, if that is how you put it... At least the doctor didn't say anything, he just let us get on with our work. After the dressing was revealed, the daughters went on and on about the wound. We got nothing against that, but it's more like they kept thinking they're smarter than the doctor, cause they keep asking really weird questions and kept giving that I'm-such-a-know-it-all  patient so you can't fool me attitude. Our doctor kept a cool expression, but his voice was all firm, going, "I will say it again for the third time, if you do not let me remove the tube, your mother isn't going to get any better. Do you understand?" The three of them bicker back and forth til our next doctor came in. He assessed the lady's situation and tried to loosen the tube, but with no success. In the end, they both agreed to admit the lady, after much negotiation. I took a swab sample from the tube site as per doctor's order, then cleaned around the area. Sounds okay. I wanted to bring the patient out for our next patient, but the daughters said, "We needed to feed her." So we went okay, but after feeding, they wouldn't leave, saying that we must not disturb her cause she's tired.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Two hours passed, and the family refused to come out, seriously, they all sat in the room with tea and snacks, locking the door and treating our room like a hotel suite. We can't provoke them, all we could do was wait and hope for an opening. And it came. One of our doctors wanted to use that room, so we told the patient that we are sorry, but our patient needed the room. Unhappy, the family packed everything and murmured under their breath as they walked out. Geez....
Then there was an incident that involved a section of a partition falling on a patient. It was just unlucky. A young patient who was groggy clung to it for support, and accidentally shoved it onto another patient who had just came out from sedation. The poor patient got hit on the head and shoulder from the fallen partition. Naturally, all of us ran to the patient, where we offered our treatment room, but because the patient was from Endoscopy, the girls took her back in to rest. Not even ten minutes later, I heard shouting from around the corner. All of us took a quick peak and saw a lady yelling. Oh, I know that lady. She's the patient's friend, she was sitting next to her when it all happened. She was yelling about getting the cashier girl to pay for her friend's medical bill, claiming that she suffered from concussion. The poor cashier girl suffered the wrath, even though it was just pure unluckiness, to the point where the managers, customer services and building and service people came running to calm the lady down. All of us felt sorry for the girl, because she gotten blamed for something that was out of her hands.  
In the end, they must've offered some sort of compensation because the lady was fuming, but not so much in the end. Super dotty, but we couldn't say anything because we weren't involved. Don't get yourself into trouble for nothing.
On the bright side, we got treated for Subway. Yay, thanks, Y*.

* Name is kept confidential to respect privacy

No comments:

Post a Comment