Can I love you? 
Will you let me? 
 
  
  

What makes a man?

What differentiates a man from a boy? How does a guy earn his right to be known as a man? Anybody can age but growth is actually a choice. I have gotten into a certain age group where I find myself at times in an awkward position not knowing if my identity should be a man or just the guy that I had been for the past decade. Of course, the latter is more natural, comfortable and convenient, but it is time to grow up and move on.

"A man takes initiative, responsibility and is not afraid of commitment," Lydia Tang.

"A man knows how to rise above his emotions," Paulus Lee. 

I agree with the above, and I know there is much more to being a man than just the above.

Ini kalilah?
 

One on Three

In the knowledge of how well my counterparts are coping in the general wards and the emergency department, there is nothing to boast about me taking charge of three patients in the high dependency unit today. It was a fine Sunday morning, and like most Sundays the ward was a little short on staffing, so the charge nurse from the shift before assigned me an extra patient to take care of.

At first it was quite manageable, the cases were relatively simple and I had previous experience in nursing one of the three patients. Moreover the ease of mind in having no need to worry about admitting another patient, alleviated a significant amount of stress throughout my morning shift. So I got over feeling overwhelmed by the fact that there were going to be three patients to whom I had to be responsible for, after taking over the night shift report and getting ready for the next eight hours of daytime, I felt okay as soon as the night staff clocked out. Everything went smoothly enough until the primary team doctors came; the doctors on-call from the night before were busy checking on the patients and their respective charts, before updating their assessments of the patients and drafting out the appropriate plans; then came the senior consultant, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, looking less intimidating on a Sunday morning. He goes to the patients one at a time, discussing the cases with the doctors who were in the ward for over the past twenty-four hours.

I had three patients' plans to follow up with. And one of them was due for an urgent abdominal ultrasound. The good news was that, while preparing that patient for the scan I had time to care for my other two patients, because a doctor and a staff nurse must accompany the patient should he or she needed to be transported out of the ward. In other words, the doctors were busy, thus giving me some spare time to do other things for the other two patients. Cutting a long story short, we transferred the patient down for her scan and came back to the ward, and the day started becoming really busy. No thanks to my lack of experience, it all just never seemed to slow down. I was so caught up with tasks to performed at/before certain specific timings.

Thankfully I managed to do a presentable-enough handover to the afternoon shift nurses. Again, this was nothing to boast about; not especially since the nursing officer on duty discretely said to me, "Joel, it is okay to ask for help" at the end of the shift.

Still, it was a good shift and I look forward to working more meaningful ones. The journey has just begun and I do wish to be living the dream.
 

I have a life

"You are nurses, most of you should be prepared to work weekends and night shifts. But, for goodness sake, do something about your social lives," said the deputy director of nursing a few months ago during her welcome speech to my batch of newly recruited nurses.

Of late I find myself doing something about my social life! Compared to how I used to live when on clinical attachments, I had been going out a lot more these days. It is not easy, more often than not, I wished I were in bed by the end of a busy shift. Sometimes when I am on the way out to meet a friend for a drink or meal, the temptation to cancel or postpone the appointment tends to be difficult to resist.

Meeting people can seem tiring, to be honest; however, thus far, I do not remember cancelling any appointments. Yay! And I am happy to realise that I nearly never regret taking the journey or paying for the food because friendships matter more in life than selfish rest.

A man needs to work but a man has to interact with the community too. No man is self-sufficient.
 

Uniform to Scrubs

So I have been wearing scrubs for over two months now, but it still feels so surreal to be no longer putting on that huge and white nursing student's uniform because in many ways, I feel like a student every day.

Work has been quite good despite the never ending list of new things that I need to learn in the workplace. Colleagues are rather friendly and I appreciate them for going easy on me. There are good shifts, there are not so good ones; thus far I am surviving and cannot wait to get on track to function more independently as a critical care nurse.

Putting on a different uniform makes me uncomfortably aware of the new and heavier responsibilities I need to bear. Stress is a good thing in this sense, that you do not dare to take lightly the patients under your care.

Cheers to a meaningful career ahead!

So I've been away...

So I've been away from blogging for quite some time. No intentions of shutting down these sites yet, just having other stuff occupying my time. Multiple tasks to take on and goals to reach, taking each step at a time!

Every time I log in to Blogger and want to try writing something, I find myself not knowing what exactly to share, where to start from and even how to put into words whatever I wished to express. It has been a while since I sat down just to reflect and write.

At least the tea cup never leaves the desk, and my supply of tea sachets is in abundance.

One of these days lah, I shall brush up on writing.