The following entry may be entirely fictious or based on actual events. Either way, it is all up to the reader to determine fact from fiction.

Primum Non Nocere

We had an acute Hindi Movie Marathon last Friday evening in the ward. It came complete with PMS-sy doctors, pseudo hypnotized staff, unrelenting work and a free collapse!

While stocks last. Batteries sold separately.

Sickening back from her annual leave. Only this time, she brought a suitcase full of drama. As usual, she floated through the entire shift. She must think that she’s a butterfly, and her only bleddy job is to flit around the nursing counter.

Fly, fly, butterfly...-squash-

Luckily snoopy was on shift with me, else I would have mauled her then crawled back to finish the shit load of mounting work. While snoopy helped sickening to serve meds and IVs, I was left to do all the turning, changing and parameters on my own.

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.

The worse thing was that sickening doesn’t bother to help when she’s free, preferring to plop herself on a plump chair or pose around the nursing counter.

Please lah. You’re no supermodel.

At around 8+pm, our patient’s blood pressure started to dip. She called the wrong doctor and the on-call doctor who came down was sooooooo super pissed because he had wasted time to walk down to our ward.

Over the phone, he ordered a quick infusion of fluids for the patient. Sickening had the cheek to ask him ‘how fast ah’?

Earlier in the shift, I highlighted to sickening that the patient did not pass urine for the whole afternoon. Her bladder did not appear to be distended when we palpated but with her continuous drip of 500ml/8hrly and persistent edema, I decided to do an in-out catherization to check if there was any acute retention of urine.

Residual urine revealed 60ml of tea colored urine. The patient was going into acute renal failure.

I told sickening to inform the doctor of the findings because pushing fluids might further crash the kidneys and went on with my mountains of diapers that needed changing.

It would be up to his clinical judgment to make the next move.

When found out that the patient was not under his charge, he started raising his voice at the counter, asking for the staff who had called him. We directed him to sickening. Angered by this episode, he later complained to my ward supervisors that we are not competent to nurse patients, stating that we were all huddled in the nursing counter and did not appear to be anxious over an impending collapse.

Please lah. You did not even examine the patient.

He said that the patient was not given any oxygen. The patient was on a 100% non-rebreathing mask.

He said that the patient was not being monitored. Hello, the Propac machine was by her side and showed the latest reading.

He said all the nursing staff were huddled in the counter. WTF. They were passing report. How else do you communicate? By telepathy?!

Idiot.

I then accompanied the correct doctor to attend to the collapse case, hooked up the heart rate monitors and informed the relatives while snoopy when to gather all the documentations necessary.

The night shift nurse did not want to absorb sickening’s work and insisted that she feed another patient the medication sickening had dispensed earlier. Sickening threw a dirty look but went as ordered because she knew fighting against the night shift nurse would result in greater drama.

So, sickening went to force feed the patient. 5 minutes later, she burst through the counter complaining that the patient had fought with her and fractured her thumb. Angrily, she harped long and hard about raising the issue with my supervisors.

In my most deadpan voice, I told her she could go to the A&E for an X-ray after she finished passing her report. Then, I went to check on the patient. I found him burying his face in a pillow, refusing to even look up. His right arm bore 2 lacerations and a huge bruise.

I just exploded.

I marched back to the counter and called my supervisor. This shit had gone too far. I told sickening that she should also raise an issue about the injuries sustained by the patient because they did not appear accidental to me.

Bitch.

Snoopy and I wanted to ease the burden on the next shift so we stayed back to help in whatever we could. Pity my supervisor though. Her afternoon shift stretched till 11.20pm.

Although sickening got 3days workmen’s compensation leave, snoopy and I still got questioned the next day by more supervisors. I did my best. Whatever you think is all up to you.

My conscience is clear.