So wrong..

Went to the surgical ward for the 1st time today.. and being just the 2nd day back from holiday, felt like the blurrest person on the face of the planet.. It was a female surgical ward, and I was clerking patients for an afternoon bedside teaching. It was an old Malay lady who was admitted for appendicitis lar.. due for surgery that evening. Took her history but later realised that I needed to do a physical examination on her too.. At the same time, she requested to borrow my handphone, which I said I didn't bring, so she turned to another stranger who happened to be a relative of another patient in the ward and kindly lent her his phone. She even offered to pay that guy back, which he refused.. Duno lar, as much as a friend told me that we are bound by professional guidelines, coz if anything happens we could be dragged into the mess, still feel not so happy lar, as in - "Why the barrier of being afraid that this elderly lady doing something to your phone? Couldn't it be practised as a simple act of showing kindness, rather than sticking to a rule which even sounds vague and subject to debate.."

Anyway, back to the physical examination. The surgical ward is unlike the medical ward (beds in medical wards are crowded into cubicles surrounded by blinds each, while surgical wards only have screens, and the beds are lined up parallel against the wall like a corridor). Before I proceed, I approached one of the staff nurses and HO's on the wards. "Hi, *trying very hard to smile* and act innocent good morning ya, I'm a medical student, and I'm posted here for the next few weeks or so.. I was wondering ar, coz you guys don't have blinds right? So how ar if I wanna do physical examination, coz it's a female ward.. any idea how the previous batch of students did it?" The female houseman said she doesn't know, the staff nurse commented that if it's only minimal exposure, then the patient probably won't mind lar..

So I proceeded with my last minute abdominal examination 15 minutes before the supposed bedside teaching, without a chaperon (coz it's abit last minute for me to save face from getting scolded by the tutor..) and with the patient's permission, exposed her from the lower border of her breasts all the way down to the pubic region.. The thing is, it was visiting hours. Relatives of the patient just beside us, and other patients ended up turning their heads towards our side as if there was some kind of free show.. and hence, got told off by the Ward sister for not using the screens.. super embarassing..

And on another note,
Me (holding an X-ray film): Hi Dr R, I'm a medical student. It's my 1st day and I'm abit lost. I was wondering whether could you tell me where is the X-ray..box.. Oh, it's there behind you.. (*swt*)
Dr R: It's not working. Maybe you can hold it up against the sunlight with the window as the backdrop..

Oh well, and to top things up, here are some photos from JB which somehow to me seem just either 'sesat' or wrong..



Acknowledgement: Photos courtesy of Anna