Apologies in advance for the following venting session.
I can't take this anymore! Tan Tock Seng's diversion of patients has resulted in chaos for the other hospitals, and the situation in my department continues to deteriorate. One medical officer has been down since last week because of a very bad back -- my sympathy goes out to the poor fellow, who's been limping for the past 2 months. Then with the SARS scare, 3 fellow doctors who were exposed have been told to go on "forced leave" till the 1-week incubation period is over, leaving us extremely short-handed. Then, the MO who's covering clinic full-time, and who took maternity leave plus sporadic annual leave this posting, is now racked with a headache and ear pain from otitis media, and is also going on medical leave! So, the other MO in my team has been deployed to run the afternoon clinic, leaving me to care for the 70 patients (70!!!) on our ridiculous list.

I don't grudge people their leave -- if you're sick, you're sick -- and I feel that post-calls are sacred ( heck, I wrote an article in the SMA newsletter about this after all -- it's in the November issue, I think ), so I'm the last person on the planet who'd even suggest asking people exhausted after a long night to stay back -- road traffic accidents happen for a reason, you know. But things are getting out of hand here, and we need locums, darn it! Locums to run the clinics, locums to help cover night calls if necessary. The UK has them, and I know for a fact that Singapore's crawling with professional locums, so why can't we get them to help out till the outbreak dies down? I even suggested closing the clinic this week, but was told that "it can't be done", whatever that means. The other alternative is for the seniors in our department to step down and cover MO duties, which will no doubt be met with great protest. So we're essentially back to square one...

Those of you following my blog, thanks for reading, and I repeat, please pray for all of us. I'd advise you to stay away from public air-conditioned areas ( especially hospitals ), but if you're familiar with Singapore, you'd realize that if you tried doing this, you'd have to migrate or move to an offshore island.

More updates another day.