Anesthetist

What is a surprise? It is something you never expect to happen.

But it does. Today was the first day we three medical students attached to PMH gynaecology team. We were arranged to visit the operation theater in the morning. The feeling of it was as great as the first time I went to OT, though this time there were no really surgical cases at all.

There were 2 rooms for the gynaecology cases which need surgery, so we shuffled the rooms to see if there were something special that catched our eyes. We found it, it was the an Anesthetist to make us stay.

He was a retired veteran who came to OT as a part time worker. In fact I did hear this legend from my friend KW. "When I was there, I stayed in the Gynae OT learing anesthesia! There was a really good doctor who would love to talk to you. It was great when you were a bit bored watching the screen showing the procedure." So as he told me yesterday.

"You know what, now public hospitals are lacking of anesthetists, so I come back to help." The old gun said. He asked where we come from. Knowing the answer, he exclaimed. "You must know Sydney Chung! I worked with him when he was a MO." Oh, he used to work with my hero. It is wonderful.

Why he wanted to be an anesthetist? It was perhaps not really related to the ROAD of happiness (or QoL in a post-modern terminology). "Some people would love staying in out-patient clinics and help patients. Yes they can help a lot, only in quantity wise. How long would they take for a patient? Perhaps 5 minutes. And then they were forced to prescribed some meds for them and send them out."

"But as an anesthetist, you need to take care of the patient who would not respond to you. It could last for so many hours. Monitoring the vital signs of the patient is easy, but rescuing the patient when the signs go wrong in few minutes were very challenging. The responsibility is heavy but it is something that make me feel like I am a doctor."

As we talked the bell rang outside. What is going on? Oh. It was something went wrong in one other OT. "Luckily there was not a fire. But in case there was a fire, you students need to help us to take the patient away!" He said. "And we can never leave the patient behind especially she was now under anesthesia. It was the moral conduct (醫德) that we must have."

I heard this term from my hero when I was in my pre-clinical year too. They really used to work together.