More or less

Is it only the 3rd week of my rotation? I am bored out of my wits in this job. The job is repetitive, mindless and involves lots of paperwork, paperwork, paperwork!! And it pays peanuts aje. Huhu.

The funniest phenomenon I have noticed since working is that within the space of one week, patients all come in with similar problems. For example when I did surgery, one week, there'd be 5 patients with pancreatitis. Then the next week, there'd be 4 patients with appendicitis. In rehab it is the same. Why, just last week, 3 patients came in with RIGHT SIDED SCIATICA. Not only sciatica, but all right sided too!! Tomorrow I am discharging two patients; both who have the same kind of ankle fracture: right ankle bimalleolar (both buku lali) fracture!!

We doctors don't have enough working memory space in our minds to remember patients names. So we tend to remember them by the most distinguishing feature of themselves. I used to refer to patients by their names &  bed number but my registrar or consultant would not recall who I would be talking about until I said something like "You know, the gangrenous appendix guy" or "the old lady with the perf'd bowel". In the acute setting, it would be quite simple because everyone had colourful problems.

In rehab, (almost) everyone is old. They look the same to me until after a few days getting to know them do they develop individual personalities in my head. Still, it is quite difficult to find distinguishing features to help identify them to my consultant when I'm talking about them (say, over the phone).

So far in our ward I can only come up with:
the young stroke
nathan (everyone knows him because he's been there for 4 months)
Clostridium lady
ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) lady
amputee man
the one with the dressing apraxia
the one with the breast rash
Bed 5B (coz everyone knows her and wants to avoid her)

There you go. All the others are pretty much old & wrinkly, use walking frame, white haired, bespectacled and or partially deaf.