Wednesday, February 01, 2006

there's something about ..... kk

Yesterday morning I brought my kid to KK hospital A&E. We decided that the fever has dragged on for too long and further more, there was lots of phelm in his throat that is making him very miserable and us very worried.

It's my first time to KK hospital since.......... I WAS BORNED!!! Wah.... it felt like returning to "hometown" after 30 over years. But seriously I've never have much faith in them. If not for the fact that most private clinics are closed and given the seriousness of my kid's condition, I would not have gone KK at all.

When I arrived, I tried to look out for the Children's clinic but the only one that I found was "CHILDREN'S EMERGENCY".

I kept asking myself if mine was an emergency but I thought perhaps not and kept on searching for a "normal" clinic.

But there isn't any other clinic and only this is opened.

So bo bian.... go in lor. It was full of people as expected of a government hospital. And what follows is an interesting observation of how a government clinic function.

We take a queue number at the door. Very typical in Singapore now. You go Nokia Care Centre, you take a queue number. You go to Starhub shop, you take a queue number.

So we waited for our turn for what it looks like a "registration" counter except that is it half of it... it is a "TRIAGE"!!!!!! DUN PRAY PRAY!!! Your Ang Moh not powderful, you also dunno what it is!!!

Nabeh!! Just realised my english standard is very layman. I dunno the meaning of that word.

But I just checked webster and this is what I got:

Triage:the sorting of and allocation of treatment to patients and especially battle and disaster victims according to a system of priorities designed to maximize the number of survivors; broadly : the assigning of priority order to projects on the basis of where funds and resources can be best used or are most needed

WAH.... very good system. Why I say good because I actually benefitted from this "Triaging".

The "receptionist" is probably some Nurse who not only register you but will take temperature, "investigate" the problem of the patient and then decide whether to give priority to you.

We were given priority and we skips about 20 patients before us. I was glad because I dun have to wait but worried that Ian's condition is serious enough to warrant a priority.

After the triaging, the next counter is for payment. Ultimate. Haven't seen the doctor, we must pay first. $65 to be precised!

That means we cannot even change our mind if we decided to leave without forfeiting the money.

Next is the waiting area for all patients. There are about 7 rooms of which one of them would be meant for the "urgent" patients. This one room do not run by queue numbers and instead they called out the names.

Soon after, our name is called.

The doctor looks like some guy fresh out of uni. Not unliked those in private practice who looked like near 40. This doctor doesn't speak very confidently and he doesn't give opinions easily unless you probe for it. At that point, I really almost want to ask for a refund. Now I know why they collect money first.

There I was, in a children "emergency".... and I'm being managed by a inexperience doctor?!?!?!

To be fair, young doctor can be good even without years of experience behind them.

The doctor prescribed some medication to be taken immediately and we were told to wait for the medication to take effect so that the doctor could attend to us again to see if the ailment require more attention. We were told to wait for 2 hours.

And meanwhile, the kid needed xray to see if the lungs are affected.

Poor kid. So young and already must go for xray.

After about 2 hours, the doctor called us in and told us everything seems fine and we were told to go pick up our medicine.

After I pick up the medicine at the pharmacy, I was expecting to be told to go somewhere to pay for it but to my surprise...... there wasn't any further payment necessary!!!

Whatever we paid earlier covers the xray and the medication. WOW.

Not that $65 is cheap or anything, but the fact that it covers that many items do suggest that perhaps the doctor is indeed not very senior.

But I must say, my kid is recovering much faster than we expected. Which is good. So much faster that we actually went shopping that same evening.

We were at OG at bencoolen when we came across an exhibition on the fortunes for all the zodiac signs.



Interestingly, they correctly predicted the health problems. BUT... academic performance!?!??!?! Grades should improve!??!?!?!?!?

For a 10 months old baby?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?

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