Hospital Duty: Day 1

Lipa City District Hospital. 7am-3pm. Dra. Anita Urbi RN, MAN, PhD

I woke up at 4:30 am this morning because I don't wanna be late on my first hospital duty at the Lipa District Hospital. I left home at 5:40 am and arrived at lipa at exactly 6:00am. I still had to wait for the others so that we could all go to LCDH at the same time to meet our Clinical Instructor. We arrived there 30 minutes earlier than the call time which was 6:45. I was early..or so I thought. Many students were already there together with their clinical instructors. I thought we were gonna be the first ones to arrive. Then we realized that we have different times. The hospital time was 30 minutes in advance, meaning, we were not early. We were almost late!!!! What the..??? What kind of place sets its clock 30 minutes in advance??? 5 minutes is okay but 30 minutes is "OA"

The good thing is that we weren't considered as late..plus, it wasn't our fault that we don't know the official hospital time. I just looked at the brighter side of it. The earlier we start, the earlier we finish.

Anyway, I forgot to mention the hospital part. The hospital doesn't look like a hospital at all! It was more like a construction site. I haven't seen the whole vicinity yet (we never had the time to get familiarized with the place) but I'm guessing that 60% of the hospital is under construction. There were hollow blocks and sacks of cement everywhere! Trucks carrying wood and gravel were parked outside the hospital. What a mess!!It was so unruly, not to mention the distracting sounds of the machineries. Not ideal for patients who are trying to recover. But that wasn't the worst part yet..inside the hospital is a different kind of mess. There were so many patients and the hospital can't accomodate them anymore. A lot of patients were already in the hallways! A typical scenario of a public hospital. There wasn't enough space to walk on to. There was poor ventilation so there was a mixed smell of sweat and urine that dominated the place. They didn't have enough hospital facilities so some of the patients in the hallways even had to bring their own beds and improvise their IV poles!! I know it's not polite to react but I really can't help myself! It's my first time so I was really shocked..not that I'm not aware of the condition in public hospitals, it's just that it was my first time to actually see one. What I don't understand is that most of the people working there, specially the nurses, don't seem to care. My partner said that maybe they are just used to that kind of situation..like it's normal to have a lot of patients staying in the hallway.

We didn't do much on our first day. We just attended the very boring orientation until 11 then we we're given a chance to have some nurse-patient interaction in the OB ward. We were only asked to do a physical assessment and initial examination on the patients but I still felt very nervous. We were brought to the ward and instead of assigning a patient to each of us, we were asked to pick our own. I picked the one in Bed F. Her name is Marissa Guab and she just gave birth to a baby boy (who was really cute, btw). She was really nice (thank God!) although the woman with her was kinda annoying. I think she was the girl's mother-in-law or something.

I kinda messed up with the arrangement of my Phys. exam and assessment and the notes I wrote weren't organized enough. But that's okay..the others had worse notes. hehe.. I interviewed the mother and I found out that she was admitted 3 days ago. She just had a normal spontaneous delivery so it means that she should only be confined for 24 hours. She said that she was supposed to be discharged yesterday but because they can't pay their bills yet, they still can't go home even if they wanted to. The longer they stay, the bigger they'll end up paying. She seemed so stressed and problematic but what can I do?? Kahit gaano kadaming beses ko syang kunan ng vital signs, wala akong magagawa sa problema nya..di ba? I wish I could help her get discharged but I felt helpless. I'm just new at this, and it's only my first day in the area. Until now, i still can't get that out of my mind. I felt this odd sympathy for that woman. And I can do nothing except to pray to God to help her get discharged.

This day has been very tiring to me even though I only handled one patient in the OB ward (well, it was actually two patients including the baby). I think I can handle the job, what I can't handle are my feelings. I become too attached to the patients. But that's just me. My mom said that I'll get used to it. I hope so coz it's really difficult if you keep on feeling sorry for all the patients there.

Okay..that's it for now. I still have to do homework.

Wish me luck for tomorrow!