Summary of Surgery SIP

WHEW that was a long time since i last posted. all i can say is that during the one month + , i effectively wasted a month of my youth doing this damned programme termed the surgery sip. obviously a foul and lame "keep up with the jones" attempt to equalise the importance of surgery with medicine.. well all i can say is that if you want to institute a programme, you do it whole-heartedly rather than throw 3 CGs at random into any hospital with a surgical department in singapore, and expect the art of being a surgical HO to slowly diffuse into us somehow. it really shows how LAZY the surgery dept of "the centre of excellence" is, v.s. the dept of medicine whom i recognise as really trying to revolutionise the current medical education system.

i mean the very fact the medicine sip programme was rather well-conducted and enforced, plus the changes in the medicine exam format reflect that the dept of medicine is really out to provide a better system for us. granted it may not please every one of us , but you certainly know that they are trying. the surgery SIP programme itself is just a surrogate marker of the profound laziness and slothiness of the dept.

all i can summarise of surgery sip at TTSH is:
scramble from bed to bed
(i) find case notes
(ii) find temperature chart
(iii) find IMR

(i) usually no problem, (ii) usually in the vicinity, (iii) can be miles away in the pharmacy or in the toilet or even in the ceiling .. i never manage to find it by myself and i strongly suspect the nurses sequester the IMRs in the storeroom of each ward to slow down the wardrounds.

Must keep a stack of (i) Radiological request forms (ii) Endoscopy request forms such that you can whip out a form as soon as your consultant says "we should repeat a..." .. or "the tummy looks distended .. Mr. Lim! pang sai pang bue chut ah??! Let's do a ..."

If you are in the Vascular team, (a la diabetic foots galore), must keep stacks of dressing sets on hand and learn to dress a diabetic foot like a chee ba0 kai.

No matter wat must must make sure you are writing for the correct patient! I have written on the wrong case-file once in the hurry of things .. so paiseh!! (Aiyarh but in the end all of the POD patients look the same, feel the same , (diabetic foot)smell the same ..)

Curtain drawing is also an acquired skill.. there are two curtains in TTSH.. the one where you just pull straight across is no-brainer. the one where you need to pull straight and then horizontally left/right requires you delicately do it such that you don't drag the curtain over the hair/bodies of the consultants/registrars ...