
Something I digged up from my computer...bit long though.
OCT 28, 2002
3 hours' sleep in 34 - and that's on a good day
The charges have been made several times: The long hours that doctors work here could endanger their patients. But just how bad does it get? SHAHIDA ARIFF follows a junior doctor on a 34-hour shift to see how it affects his concentration and standard of patient care
IN THE 34 hours from when he started duty on Thursday morning, Dr Thomas Ho saw 45 patients, assisted in three surgeries, had five meals and got three hours' sleep.
All in all, it was a good on-call shift for the 29-year-old medical officer at Tan Tock Seng Hospital.
After all, he said, things could have been worse - he could have missed his meals, gone without sleep completely and seen a lot more patients in much less time.
'Thank God such bad days don't happen often,' said the trainee with the department of orthopaedic surgery. He does one or two on-call duties a week - shifts where he is on standby at the hospital throughout the night.
Thursday's duty started at 7.30 am with Dr Ho checking on his 10 patients who were warded in different sections.
He spent about five minutes with each of them, discharged a couple, and was done by 8.45 am.
Thirty minutes later, he was downstairs at the clinic, and went on to see a dozen patients over three hours.
Most were seeking follow-up treatment, the kind of patients he would dread on busy days.
'If I have a long list of patients waiting to see me, and a patient is asking lots of questions about why he hasn't recovered, I get a bit frustrated,' he said.
'I want to finish with them quickly because I have a pile to go through.'
Such a scenario would reflect what was said in a report by an international panel of medical experts late last year.
The panel, led by Lord Ronald Oxburgh, honorary professor at the University of Cambridge, reported what had been said countless times - that there was a shortage of public doctors, and those in the system were being overworked.
One comment went: 'Medical officer (is) seeing up to 40 patients per clinic, with little time for