Day 243, Perfection

Day 243, I’d like to believe that every day we strive towards our own personal ideas of perfection, what that entails varies on one’s point of view. In medicine one such perfect moment is to “empty” a ward, today I was privileged enough to achieve this goal, but perfection didn’t taste as sweet as it was promised.

It is not unheard of for this to happen. One of my seniors back in the UK told me the wards were like a ghost town on the morning of 7/7 as all the hospitals were put on emergency standby. Indeed, when I arrived at Mseleni, many of the wards were empty, forced to be so due to the strike action stopping patients from entering the hospital. Whilst working in A+E in London we managed to empty the department on two occasions; both of which were at four in the morning and involved some tricky expediting of patients to other wards.

Every day on the paediatric ward the aim is to have no patients left because I have made them better enough for them to be at home. Up until today I have been unable to discharge them all because there were always ones that were too sick to go home. Sometimes the patients will empty a bed themselves, but that is not the preferred option.

A combination of an apparent lull in admissions over the last few days and plans for longer stay patients have conspired to result in this coveted state of affairs. But the lazy day without my daily ward round did not give me the satisfaction I had anticipated. It wasn’t that I was simply bored, there always other things with which to fill the work day and I managed to find work with other doctor’s patients and the OPD.

In fact it was more that having managed to achieve what I was striving for I found myself purposeless. The journey, the striving, the anticipation is what makes it interesting. It is one of life’s little foibles that once we’ve achieved a goal, the only thing to bring the thrill back is to start striving towards something else.

Nonetheless, however briefly, I was able to relish the moment. The empty beds, the smiling nurses and the silence on the ward was the very picture of serenity. A welcome start to a long weekend trip with family, and though I reminded my colleagues that it is only polite to return a ward in the state it was found, I am looking forward to plotting the next perfect moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wno3i5hIAI8