Hhmmm. For what its worth, considering the limited viewership of this blog, I'm still going to type what I'm going to type here..
Firstly, I should start off by saying sorry to anyone and everyone i've unintentionally crossed paths with in the wards. My personal preference is of open communication to clarify issues, and i'm eternally grateful to my friends who have bothered to catch me to tell me certain issues, to clarify things, and for me to learn from any mistakes so that I will hopefully improve and be a better person.
I shall just clarify yesterday's issues for starters.. Yesterday, we got tasked with finding short cases for a tutorial in the afternoon.. and since the 5 of us didn't have good cases, we thought we'd call and ask around for cases for tutorial.
E was really helpful and obliging in this aspect, so yes, I did feel quite bad, granted the fact that our beds were really sign-less, and not much good for short cases. The only case I had was patient P with bilateral pneumonia and asthma exacerbation, who still had creps and ronchi even at day3.. So i passed him that bed at 9plus in the morning before heading off to a tutorial in the morning.
Tutorial passed, followed by lecture and lecture, ending finally at 2pm? So we had a quick lunch, before learning that our tutor was too busy to take us for a tutorial today. Well, we should still be able to have a look at the short cases before they went home?
So we went up to see a patient C with Chickenpox. This nice patient was obliging to talk to us.. Fortunately for her, her lesions were drying up already, and there was only 1 vesicle/scab left on the dorsum of her foot that was still visible.. We then headed down to the ward, where we met up with E. I told him abt patient C, and another patient T we saw in tutorial in the morning, and a 4th patient O with a Paeds Ortho condition.
And here's where it all went kinda the other way.
We had seen T in the corridors during tutorial in the morning, and hence, I had the wrong impression of T's ward and bed number, and inadvertently gave the wrong number to E. The 1st patient P, since I had morning tutorial and did not follow the morning rounds, had apparently been discharged during the late morning / afternoon without me noticing, and yes, E went to a bed with a whole new patient. For patient C, by the time E went up to her room, well, she had applied white calamine lotion onto her last chickenpox vesicle on her foot - so there was effectively nothing to see. And the final patient with a Paeds Ortho condition O, well, let's just say that the mother wasn't very receptive to Medical students.
So yes I can understand why E might mistakenly think that I sent him and his group on a "wild goose chase" throughout the various levels of the hospital, while I had benefitted from his generosity. And I don't blame him for thinking that way.
(For patient T, it was only when we tried to track up her discharge details, did we realise that we had gotten the wrong ward and bed number, and hence wrong patient.)
With regards to the final cardiac patient H, I only saw her at close to 5-6pm after she came up from the cardiac clinic.. So I'm sorry if my latest message might have seemed a bit "too little, too late".
I tried. And I'm sorry that I unknowingly sent you on a wild goose chase. I really am. If I had known that these things were going to happen, I won't have told you or your group the bed numbers.
And I also apologise if I might have unknowingly caused your patient some inconvenience. I'll apologise to her personally about it tomorrow.
And if there has been previous things brewing already, I'll really be grateful if you'll step up and tell me about it, so that I can change and improve..
