Pav Bhaji and No OT

Lots of things happened today which ensured that nothing much would happen in the future. It shall soon become clear.

We were not posting cases in the OT since we needed to keep the cases for U.G. exams but little did we know that we might not get to operate on these people at all. Apparently the M.S. (Superintendent) of our hospital decided to handle our complaints about not getting enough operating tables with some action. he declared that all routine cases be stopped for 2 weeks or until we got new clothes in the OT. Brilliant, except that the problem wasn't no clothes, it was clothes not coming back from the laundry and sterilizer in time. So, we now have no OT to do for the next 2 weeks and we have some 15-20 cases admitted with the promise of an operation because that was the only way they would agree to stay in the hospital and let undergrads examine them all the time.

The evening then was relatively free as there were no clothes for emergencies as well (only life threatening cases must be taken, the rest transfered to a higher centre). So, Nasa and I decided to go out for dinner. We meet the great social worker Brother Ni on the road. He insists on chatting up with us and taking us to this road side pav bhaji stall that his father had help set up. The owner of the stall is now deceased and his son treats Brother Ni like a God for obvious reasons. So, we sit for dinner eating all the E. Coli we can get our dirty fingernails on and he starts telling us about stories about his 28 years of association with the hospital and how much power he has but doesn't show. Now, to give him credit he usually does his thing pretty quietly and he does do a lot of good for the hospital but everyone brags and so does he.
Apparently he used to smoke 10 packets of cigarettes a day and have a half bottle of alcohol daily till he got his heart attack. Alcohol I can think of believing but the cigarettes would have to be in his mouth even when he brushed his teeth for him to complete 10 packs a day. The next story was about him flying 20 feet in the air after a motorcycle accident and coming out of that without a scratch and riding to the hospital on the same bike. Nasa is intermittently looking into his phone possibly for the hope of a phone call that can take him away from all this, I'm messaging my ppl here and there, playing hangman in the meanwhile and the next story comes. now, we're talking about dogs - Labs, German shepherds, dobermen etc. I used to be a doctor dude!!!!
Anyway we finish with dinner and about 2 hours later i'm finally ready to go and we get on the bike to get back to the hospital and it starts pouring.

Lots of talk, lots of activity, end result - No Work!!
You get it all in a Municipal set up I tell you.


P.S. Looking forward to writing about the exam i'm going to conduct on my b'day. Another perk of working with the BMC. They pick the best dates for exams.

The Importance of OT MAMA's

Summer vacation is about to end.

The only problem is that in this hospital the vacation will only end when the mama's of the ot start coming back to work.

During the summer the various ot assistants were on leave. I believe them to be the masters at resource management because they all had planned their vacation so beautifully that at no point in time was more than one operating table allowed to work amongst 3 departments. Which basically meant they controlled us while not even being there.

We were constantly arguing about whether OB/GYN or ENT or Surgery gets preference for the table and I'm not talking only about routine ot's but even emergencies.

A time came when one of our emergencies was made to get up off the table because the gynaec people came in with a ceasarian section to be done immediately and there was no staff or other table available for that patient.

Lesson learnt: The OT in our hospital is not controlled by Doctor's, Nurses or even the administration.....Its the OT MAMA's who rule the roost.

Hence the mama shall now be given preference to all when it comes to maska maroing!!