patient's happiness...

Although most of the holidays here were “adjusted” to coup with the 5 days week working scheme here, there are still some festive holiday date which is “unadjustable”. The rice dumpling holiday fell on Wednesday and that means that there would be no night clinic for that night. It was quite a busy night when da patient came in. The patient was seen in the OPD in the morning for his routine hypertension follow-up. He had complaint of palpitation when he came back again in the evening. I glanced through his medication and found that he was given ventolin and Xanthium due to his dry cough. He told me that the chest physician had told him that one of the drug (he is put on Atenolol, Zestril, Ismo) he was taking could cause cough. \However the physician had DC the atenolol instead and kept the Zestril. I dragged him to the resus room and asked him if he had any impotence problem and he said yes. I then proceeded to explain the side effect of all the drugs he is taken and told him that I would readjust the medication and advice him to follow again in the CV department instead…

I do not want to point any finger but yet it is negligence  definitely. He had seen the relevant physician for the past 6 months and the issue of impotence was never raise (for god sake, he is only 53 and put on beta blocker…). The dry cough had been going for months and no one had ever wanted to DC the zestril….

Well, our chest physician had some problems since his promotion to head of department of internal medicine. He had an argument with the imaging department (a case of pneumomediastinum in which he had inserted a chest tube for a skin fold line which he thought was a pneumothorax line…) in the morning discussion session, the imaging department had since then absent from our meeting or turn out very late. He had also some opinion with the ED “admitting” skill …..

Or maybe he is just too tired….well, either way, patient “happy” life is our main concern….