Great Bargain

WHAT?!!! I PAID $300 FOR THE MRI AND YOU TELL ME IT'S NORMAL??!!!! HOW CAN LIKE THAT??!! THERE MUST BE SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE MACHINE!!!!


What can i say?
"Oh sir, i need to congratulate you on your great bargain! You have torn all ligaments possible in the joint! On top of that, the cartilage are all worn out. There's even hundreds of hairline cracks that only the MRI could detect!!! In fact because this is the first time you are supporting our product, we are throwing in a complimentary tumour in your bone! Though we cannot determine it's nature for now, we can offer a discount for the next MRI of your whole body to detect any more of them!!! Good deal for $300 eh? Game for more?"


If only the cause of pain is so straightforward...

Fighting against time

Running clinics is always a fight.. against time.
There must always be a time limit to one's listening ear. And a time limit to one's explanation of the condition, else the patient's waiting outside may kick down your door, or the clinic assistant may suddenly become less helpful (cos she'll have less time for lunch or go home later..)

Fortunately there's somehow always a mix of patients and cases in the clinics. Talkative and problematic patients are often buffered by nicer ones who just listen and don't complain. It pains me everytime i have to spend only 1 minute on a nice patient just so that i have the time to handle a problematic patient who talks for 10mins without listening to me (but whose problem may be only half as serious as the nice patient)

The family medicine posting really threw light to a clinic encounter. It's better to find out the patient's wants early in the encounter so that the session will not go down the wrong track and end up real long.
We can throw the whole chapter's explanation for the condition the patient has but ultimately he will still be persistently sitting in his seat refusing to buldge if all he came for was actually an excuse IPPT memo..

After 1 month, I think i prefer standing the whole day in the OT pulling retractors than to sit in the air con clinic with shivers down my spine everytime i click the 'refresh' button and seeing expectantly how the number of waiting patients increase.