so it happened that the HO went off call, as her other HO and her MO kindly decided to cover for her…

it was around 2pm… lucky her…

around 2pm+, R n the other HO became ‘inactivated’ for almost an hour plus since they were stuck at a ‘veinless’ patient who needed an iv plug.

i was just innocently sitting at the nurse counter tracing my patients’ results when…

nurse 1: hey ‘dopey’, r u covering for ‘ho’?

me: errr… since she’s not here, i guess so…

nurse 1: good ok! can you write a memo to SLH for Mr A and update them about his status. then can you also churn out a medical report for Mr B addressed to EH to help in his transfer there?

me: ok… (starts to go thru case notes)

nurse 2: ah, ‘dopey’, patient’s plug fell off, help me set another plug for bed 19!

nurse 3: oh can you help me take a set of PT/PTT for bed 23?

ward clerk: ‘dopey’, patient in bed 17 is going home in the afternoon. do discharge summary ok…

me: isn’t she from renal med?

ward clerk: ya, but she’s in yr ward, so u have to do for her!

me: [churns out the prescription first (since that’s like the rate-limiting-step), hunts for HO to get it signed and off it zooms to the pharmacy! then get started on the MC and discharge when…]

MO: ‘DOPEY’ AH! your patient’s potassium was 5.7 yesterday, how come you didn’t do anything about it?

me: I told the HO and the REG!

MO: oh, anyway, you cannot don’t do anything if the potassium is so high. do a repeat K now and send as urgent. if it’s high, you have to go correct it ah. how you correct high potassium?

me: blah blah blah (on how to correct high potassium)

45 min later… discharges done, bloods done, K comes out as a freaking 6.1! ECG stat: PEAKED T WAVES

spends the next 30min struggling with IMR, resonium, iv calcium gluconate, D50 and insulin…

finally… the REG and CON arrives, and i hadn’t finished tracing results yet… but still had to update them. SIGH…

after a pathetic set of ward rounds, thankfully the MO did most of the talking, had to finish up the memo and do a repeat urgent potassium level again.

now i am one step closer to knowing how an HO really functions. How does one keep a million things in his mind and multi-function without making mistakes at all!