tenth dAy of AttAchMent

Today is my last day of orientation which consist mostly of talks from various departments. The things that they mentioned are quite similar and they tend to emphasize their 5 core values a lot.

The 5 core values are :

• Respect
• Professionalism
• Compassionate
• Social Responsibility
• Collegiality

so i pretty much believe that we have to follow the core values closely to be a good employee in Alexandra Hospital.

The HR department had a few quizzes which test us the location and see whether we know the Alexandra Hospital basics and values on our fingertips. It is quite helpful as it tends to let us able to remember the basics and values earlier and better understanding.

We had a fire safety talk which quite interesting as the presenter demostrate the proper and improper way of using the fire extinguisher. We also got to have a feel of how to use it. Alexandra Hospital has 2 fire drills annually.

nineth DaY of AttAchMent

Today is the first day of orientation for all the new staffs. There was anxiety and shyness in me as i got to see a lot of new faces which i am not familiar with. To my shock, some of the staffs who worked for more than 6 months and miss out the orientaion had to go for it too. It seems like it is a compulsory for all the staffs to go for orientation once. There are quite a few of talks from various departments. The most inspirational talk i ever attend is by the CEO, Mr Liak Teng Lit as he told us that dun be afraid to make mistakes but only the smart ones will not make the mistakes twice and be initiative by contributing something meaningful to the society. Singapore's healthcare financing is pretty much similar to the british's which is the tax based. it means that working adults paying tax that contributes to the funds for the healthcare for the elderly. The way that the Mr Liak made the speech seems so interesting that allow the listener to concentrate more on what he is about to say regardless the number of hours that he took. He also told us the history of Alexandra Hospital and how the old Alexandra Hospital looked like.

The various departments such as Nursing, Quality Management, infection control, clinical services and cooperate communications made about 30 minutes presentation each. The staffs who are in charge for these departments gave us a brief idea of they do in each individual department, who are the committee members are and the expectations for it.

We also have a short game which allowed us to brainstorm together and practise the 7 habits of highly effective people. It showed that teamwork and perserverence are so important regardless what you are doing. After that game, Jasmine who is the one in charge of the orientation explained each of them to use and hope that we will practise it more often.

We had a tour around the hospital for like 45 minutes. They show us where the emergency, hospital club, hostel, montruary, genatric, rehabilitation, pharmacy, different type of clinics, library and physiotherapy centre is.

eighth day of attachment

The first thing that i know for the day is that the sp02 probe usually end up spoilt and it is not cheap (it cost around S$250). The reason that they get spoilt easily due to dropping it on the floor accidentally. i went to the day surgery recovery ward for the first time today. it is air- conditional and was opened for SARS isolation ward during the SARS period.

The moment i got back to the department, faz asked me to do the transferring of the leakage current test of the TE-171 that i mentioned yesterday and closed the job for it. Since it is a class 1, you have to test for the ground resistance. Sometimes, you are unable to find the right round, the screen of the safety analyser will displayed "over ohm" or a resistance value larger than 02 ohm. If the "over ohm" message displayed, there are two reasons and they are either that point is not the ground or the screws are too rusty and you have to file it. That point is the ground but not the right one when the resistance displayed is larger than 0.2 ohm. As soon as i completed it with the help of faz, we have to deliver it back to emergency ward. Before that, we had to collect a faulty device to send for repairing.

After lunch, i got the chance to try out two models of transport physiologic monitors. One of them has a touch screen panel property and different colours for different waveforms while the other has only a colour and you have to press the buttons instead of having the touch screen panel. i found out from Mr Toh that normal person has Sp02 of 98% to 100%. The monitors have a release valve in it that would be used if the pump does not stop the pumping at 300 mmHg to prevent the pressure for the cuff wrap from crashing your arm.

Before i end my work, i had to search for devices that needed to have maintenance done during this month. one of the is a tonopen and the other is genofuge which is a mini version of the centrifuge. Unfamiliar of the locations in the hospital of me was pretty lost as i do not know where the lab is so i had to ask the nurses for location. The doctor, Mr Lim is pretty nice as he was like " you sure you are able to bring it back on your own?". At first i thought genofuge would be quite light but the fact is it is quite heavy. When doing maintenance for lab devices, we have to wear gloves as there will be using body fluid or blood samples for testing.

i will be having orientation for tomorrow and Friday at seminar room. it is an orientation for full-time empolyees but since i am working here for 5 months, i have to go for it. I asked my fellow colleagues where is the seminar room as i have no idea where it is. They told me nicely and quite patient as they have to repeat like twice in order for me to know the exact location.

seventh Day of AttAcHmEnt

Spent the whole morning in clinic A which is the clinic specialised in diabetes waiting for suitable subjects who have neuropathy only. Getting 16 subjects' footscans may seems like easy to some people but the process of finding the right subject is pretty difficult as not many patients have neuropathy. Thankfully, i had two male patients who fitted the requirements and they are quite cooperating. i just found out that diabetic patients' feets unable to lie flat on the foot sensor matrix.

I went back to my department after doing my research. I saw Faz having a lot of paperwork to do so i offered my help to her to share her workload and also able to learn new things. There are different ways of doing the documentation of service reports as the way Faz taught me is pretty different from Lee Chong's. I had to put one of my colleague's name for the service portion of the equipment file which stores the information of it. There about 3 devices required commissioning today but i only able to see one of them which is the patient warmer. It is used for hyperthermia patients during surgery and recovery period. It has a pump and inflatable blanket. It is a class 1 type BF. the first thing that come to my mind when i at first saw it is a mattress pump system. It is pretty similar to the mattress pump system but just that it generates heated air. i saw the third generation of infusion pump which is the TE-171. It has almost the same function as the ST-503. The difference between the two of them is TE-171 is able to let the user to select the occlusion limit which ranges from high to low. i can say it seems more precised than the first generation infusion pump. Even for the testing of the device is totally different as the occlusion has to be done for high to low and the readings of the measurement are different too. The flow rate has to be about 25ml.

SiXtH DaY of AttAcHmEnT

Two of my colleagues just came back from their leave. One of them is having holiday with her family while the other is hospitalised due to consuming of the wrong medication. i went around the hosptial with faz todae for most of the time. We did preventive maintenance for about 9 devices today. We had to bring along with a defibrillator analyzer and safety analyzer. We were suppose to bring a tachnogenerator to measure the speed of the centrifuge which is a device that used to separate the plasma and blood in a test tube by using spinning mechanism but we forgotten about it. i just found out that medical devices are usually kept in the equipment room. If the devices are unable to be found in the room, we have to search it everywhere in the ward as the patients may be using it. we have to remove the maintenance label after we finished doing it. The difference of doing the maintenance for a medical device with the lab device is when you test for the leakage current and other necessary measurement, you have to place the black probe on the casing of the devices and digital multimeter is required too.

After the first half of maintenance, we went back to the department to do the commissioning of defibrillator : lifepak 12 to see whether the paddles and device are working. Next, we continue doing preventive maintenance of devices in the day surgery and x-ray department. For the day surgery, i saw this device that is used to sterilize the handpieces such as electrical drill after every use and chemical solution is used to do so.

We have to transfer the data from the safety analyser to the computer to update the profiles of the medical devices.