White Coat Fever

I was wondering why today, there were so many people wearing their white coat. Bit unusual.

New batch of medical students from PMC starting their clinical rotations?

No! Today our DG visited our hospital. DG wanted to meet all consultants, specialists and house oficers. (No, I don't want to see the MOs. Go, do your own rounds)

The meeting started at about 8.30am. He first had some rapport with all the staffs that were present. He started by first commenting about his visit to the medical wards earlier on. He was impressed by the professionalism shown by the doctors in the ward. (Obviously, as everyone is in white!). He commented that there were good rapports among the specialists, MOs and HOs as well as the patients.

He then proceeded to identifying the house officers. They were all asked to stand up for him to see. He then asked if anyone of them have any problem or issue to bring up. Non of them said anything apparently. This prompted Tan Sri to say, "Well, look like everyone is smiling, seem very happy working here".

(Of course they are a contented bunch, no scolding, no yelling, no ragging nowadays. All the malignant-typed superiors are gone and obviously, these HOs are enjoying themself here, come to work near 8am, take some blood, let the MOs write, half-heartedly clerk a few cases, write some rojak discharge summaries and there they go at 5pm. These are what the current HOs are doing. Who cares, I am just a "clerk", no need to use brainlah).

He then gave a bit of encouraging words, reminding how fortunate the current HOs were and motivated them to work hard (don't complain, ah..) and to stay loyal to the Government service.

So, the meeting proceeded on with the DG briefing us about his visit here and the 9th Malaysian Plan on health care.

Later on, our state director presented her briefing about what had been lined up for the health care in Penang state under the 9th Malaysian Plan.

Then, our hospital director's turn to brief us. She started on by showing some statistics about the increasing hospital admissions, operations, patients' visits to the OPD and specialist clinics, the increasing expenditure, and the usual, never ending issue of budget that never seem to ever expand.

She went on to highlight the current issues and problems, and about the non-delivery of the long anticipitated ACC things, blah..., blah..., blah....

There were some serious discussions and comments half way, and there were so many queries from the DG regarding the ways things had been planned, which was beyond his knowledge/understanding.

No doubt, there were so many issues that really needed to be discussed at higher level. He wanted another discusion on the coming Thursday......

Our hospital director then summarized everything with some inspiring thoughts: "CROSS FERTILIZING EACH OTHERS MIND: Corporate culture", which made everyone broke into hysterical laughters.