Tin Kosong.....

As our hospital is located beside one of the major road leading to east coast, I would encounter foreign tourist from time to time.

There was this tour bus which lost control yesterday. 5 patients were sent to our setting. One of the middle-aged patient had immediately caught my attention while I was busy wrapping up my admission order for another patient. He had talked in a loud tone asking the EMT who was completing the transfer note, “ Does this hospital has MRI, if there is no MRI, why is the “fart” meaning of send me over ?.”

While Mr G talking in a loud tone, the triage nurse directed me to another lady passenger who looked more “severe”.  I did a quite look as the EMT told me that there would be 3-4 passengers coming in later. The lady produced an US passport and apparently the group came from US.

As expected, when Mr G(MRI asking guy) sat in front of me, he had asked me if our hospital have an MRI, for he wanted a MRI scan to confirmed his injuries. I had confirmed with him that we do have a 1.5 T MRI and it could be done stat. He raised a question that what does a  1.5 T means and on the spot, I knew that his is  “Tin Kosong” type of patient (Tin kosong -> malay proverb = empty can; nothing in it and produced a loud sound when being hit). After explaining the meaning of 1.5 T, I proceeded to tell him that as he is not a local with health insurance, he would need to pay up for the scan.

He was quite agitated and interrupted the consultation as he wished to call up the tour guide to confirm about the payment as he claimed that he have no money. I had grinned, as the answer was out of my expectation as I thought, he would be clapping his chest and said, “ never fear, money is not a problem….”

I proceeded to the other patients who flooded the unseen patient list. After minutes later, he had come back and told me that the tour guide had promised that the company would handle the expenses. I had then told him that the MRI report would took a few hours as the imaging would need to be reconstructed and the radiologist would take a few hours to give me an urgent report. He had shown me a queer look and I had proceeded to tell him, “if he had been to a medical center for MRI check up, it would take weeks for an appointment and another 1 week for the report.” He then showed me a “Yes ah? I had never gone through that” look…..

I told him that in ED, most of the time CAT scan would be enough and I would arranged one for him under his request. He agreed with my offer as he seemed to have run out of suggestion/request.

The rest of the consultation was uneventful as Mr G become more polite since then.

Few months ago, I had met this Chinese tour involving in a bus accident. The ED was packed with 10+ elderly mainlanders; most of them suffered from minor contusion. All of them were polite and asked intelligent question during the consultations; it took me quite a while for me to explain their condition, they were “good” patients indeed….

Another thing that had surprised me was that none of the tourist knew where they would be putting up later that night....