As a doctor, I was taught to have unconditional positive regard for all my patients and to always affirm the value of each person. However, working as an in-house physician in a clinic and diagnostic center here in Manila has sometimes made me forget about all those high sounding crap taught to me in med school and wish that I could wrap my hands around my patient's neck and squeeze to my heart's content.
My duties in the clinic involve seeing general medicine cases, such as the common colds, a lot of urinary tract infections and many many sexually transmitted infections. I also see some patients that need follow up such as hypertensive old people but I often just refer them to the specialists since they get their income from the number of patients they see. My second set of duties include doing pre-employment physical examinations for all the clients that the clinic has. I see the client-patient, do PE and later classify if they are fit to work or not depending on the results of the laboratory tests and chest x-rays. This duty takes up the bulk of my time and absolutely requires no brain power.
What it requires though is patience. Lots of it. Whole heaping piles of it. A fucking shitload of it. Everyday, I am plagued with at least one little shit-face who manages to make my temper rise and swear that this would be my last day in that place. Everyday I get to see people who make me rethink about going to pathology or radiology where I don't have to deal with people.
Please don't get me wrong, the vast majority of my patients and those I see to do pre-employment PE to are good people and I am oftentimes satisfied and happy that I was able to provide a service to them. It's just that some of them have a real talent of making me want to go Chuck Norris on them and destroy them with a round house kick. To the face.
This blog will record my daily frustrations with my patients, the people I work with, and other dumbass people or situation I encounter here in Metro Manila. Most probably, I will also be writing about my own dumbass deeds since I do end up getting pissed off at myself often.
Let the anger begin.
My duties in the clinic involve seeing general medicine cases, such as the common colds, a lot of urinary tract infections and many many sexually transmitted infections. I also see some patients that need follow up such as hypertensive old people but I often just refer them to the specialists since they get their income from the number of patients they see. My second set of duties include doing pre-employment physical examinations for all the clients that the clinic has. I see the client-patient, do PE and later classify if they are fit to work or not depending on the results of the laboratory tests and chest x-rays. This duty takes up the bulk of my time and absolutely requires no brain power.
What it requires though is patience. Lots of it. Whole heaping piles of it. A fucking shitload of it. Everyday, I am plagued with at least one little shit-face who manages to make my temper rise and swear that this would be my last day in that place. Everyday I get to see people who make me rethink about going to pathology or radiology where I don't have to deal with people.
Please don't get me wrong, the vast majority of my patients and those I see to do pre-employment PE to are good people and I am oftentimes satisfied and happy that I was able to provide a service to them. It's just that some of them have a real talent of making me want to go Chuck Norris on them and destroy them with a round house kick. To the face.
This blog will record my daily frustrations with my patients, the people I work with, and other dumbass people or situation I encounter here in Metro Manila. Most probably, I will also be writing about my own dumbass deeds since I do end up getting pissed off at myself often.
Let the anger begin.
