Jogging Playlist

This is my current hodgepodge of popular songs that make up my 2hour jogging playlist, starting with lower tempo music for warm-up, higher tempo (around 140bpm) for the middle crash and slowing down again to cool down.

1. Weezer – Island in the Sun
2. Maroon 5 – Not Falling Apart
3. David Guetta ft Akon – Sexy Bitch
4. The White Stripes – Seven Nation Army
5. Alexandra Stan – Mr. Saxobeat
6. Pitbull ft T-Pain – Hey Baby (Drop It To The Floor)
7. The Black Eyed Peas – I Gotta Feeling
8. Muse – Uprising
9. Outkast – The Way You Move
10. The Black Eyed Peas – Boom Boom Pow
11. Outkast – Idledwild Blue
12. Gorillaz – Feel Good Inc
13. The Killers – Somebody Told Me
14. Coldplay – Viva La Vida
15. U2 – Vertigo
16. Ben Harper – Put It On Me
17. Bruce Springsteen – Radio Nowhere
18. Outkast – B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)
19. Lifehouse – All In
20. Michael Jackson – Beat In
21. Offspring – Hit That
22. Duffy – Mercy
23. Enrique Iglesias ft Pitbull – I Like It
24. The Black Eyed Peas – Don’t Stop the Party
25. David Guetta ft Nicki Minaj – Turn Me On
26. Bodyrockers – I Like The Way You Move
27. David Guetta ft Usher – Withot You
28. Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks
29. Kylie Minogue – I Can’t Get You Out Of My Head
30. Groove Armada – I See You Baby Shaking That ass
31. Usher – More

Next up, a purely rock playlist, and a slower high-energy list for weights.

Spread the word – Nurses passing report / giving medications should not be disturbed

Doctors gripe about nurses and patients. Nurses gripe about doctors and patients. Patients and their family gripe about nurses and doctors. At the end of the day, the healthcare professionals hunker down and do their jobs as they feel they have a responsibility to, and the patients still need to seek medical care.

 Yes, we complain that patients nowadays have a sense of entitlement and enjoy the sick role, treating the overworked nursing staff like their maids. How often do you see or hear of patients who complain that the nurse is within sight, within earshot but refuses to stop what she’s doing to help a young man admitted for pneumonia get a cup of milo… just because she’s wearing a bright-coloured vest that says “SERVING MEDICATION”.

Doctors too are guilty of the same, grumbling that the nursing staff are so busy “passing report” that they cannot answer queries / spare the case files / serve the patient whose family is complaining loudly about the lack of milo.

 You would think that we would know by now that allowing the nurses to pass report and give medications uninterrupted is shown to decrease errors. Yet people routinely complain about the nurses doing something that is shown to help them (the doctors by knowing the patients better, the patients by not giving them medication that can trigger anaphylaxis and lead them to die)

Perhaps what we need is better information giving.

For instance, the ward should have a poster of a nurse in the serving medication vest “Please let me focus on serving you the right medicine.” or something to that effect.

The medical officer room should have one targeted at the doctors that says “Please let us pass report. Proper handing over lets us help you with your patient.”

Think it’ll help? Maybe it’s a start. 

 

Singaporean Television Drama – The Oath

Loathe as I am to admit it, the medical drama The Oath by Wawa Productions, is actually quite entertaining to watch.

The Oath

It’s so bad, it’s good. It’s like how forensic experts roll their eyes at the popular show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and lament how juries in the US nowadays expect the same impossible magic before convicting criminals (“What, you don’t have DNA evidence + tire trails + electronic money trail + 5 CCTV surveillance tapes + trace chemicals matching the one from this obscure chemical plant 20 years ago, we can’t convict this robber!”)

Similarly, we have actually had people ask: “Can poking the fingertips and rubbing the ears help to treat acute stroke?”

The Oath Episode 1

Then there’s this blood-vomitus-inducing car accident part at 12:30 of the above video that explains why the character acted by Christopher Lee basically got kicked out of medical school for general quackery. First, please contrast what happened in the above video with the below video (read: Singaporean scriptwriters may have copied a few things from more successful dramas)

Iryu Team Medical Dragon Episode 1

It starts from 0:45min, where they make a judgement after listening for breathing and percussing for hyperresonance that this lady has suffered bilateral spontaneous pneumothorax requiring urgent needle (pen) decompression to buy time pending arrival of the ambulance.

Now compare that with The Oath, where the medical student played by Christopher Lee on his way to an exam runs to a polytrauma patient from a road traffic accident, does not try to assess / open the airway, does not listen for breathing, and proceeds to jab a pen into her chest. Nice. The blog link above says it’s a cricothyroidotomy but the area of insertion is wrong, it’s more likely an improvised needle decompression.

Donorweb – Your blood is replaceable… a life is NOT !

As a practising physician who uses blood products, I feel compelled to walk the talk and donate blood on a regular basis. If you are keen to donate blood for the first time in Singapore and are not sure how to go about it, go onto the website and take a look.

Donorweb – Your blood is replaceable… a life is NOT !

On Donorweb, you can see the current blood stocks in Singapore (at the time of posting low in A and O), upcoming Bloodmobile Drives to look for one near your place of residence/work, see where you can donate blood at Bloodbank@HSA, Bloodban@Woodlands, and have your queries on the forums.

That said, you can also donate blood at NUH, as I just did a couple of days ago. I have a fondness for NUH because it’s the first place I donated at. If you drive and park at NUH you can get a carpark redemption voucher. Unlike my previous post which stated 3 months, now the time in between donations is 16 weeks (4 months)

Go forth, you can save lives too!

Coffee – Yahava KoffeeWorks

Friends of a friend of mine went to Australia and tasted the coffee from Yahava KoffeeWorks. They were so taken by it that they decided to franchise it and bring it to Singapore.

Another of my friends gave me one of the coffee tumblers she bought from Yahava KoffeeWorks. The power of the tumbler allows me to obtain 50 cent discounts off drinks at Yahava. 50 cents a lot of money!

Yahava Keepcup ($19.50)

I have heard that the main business of Yahava KoffeeWorks was the supplying of coffee beans. Unlike illy, which produces only one blend, Yahava provides a range of coffee blends. Their shop along Upper Thomson Road is supposedly more for people to sample their coffees and being a café is not their core business.

Tempering my expectations with that in mind, I made my way down to check out the place for myself.

Fortunately, I am familiar with the area (due to frequenting Plum Village) because it isn’t one of those places that is very visible from the main road and can be a little difficult to find. Looks promising!

Fitness: Walking

Sometimes people ask me: J., how do you maintain your fantastic 6-packs, broad shoulders, Arnie-worthy biceps and defined calf muscles?

Then I wake up.

That said, it never hurts to try to maintain some fitness, and one thing I do do is walk, even though it will never get me Arnie-worthy deltoids.

It’s one simple activity that I tell all my patients who are keen on weight loss to start doing.

Drinks: Gas Chamber Shooter @ Chupitos

No pictures… the lighting wasn’t good enough to take one.

The drink itself looked innocuous. A shot glass filled to the brim with transparent green liquid.

Only a moron calls a shot glass filled with transparent green liquid innocuous. It looked deadly and venomous, unlike the cheerful looking Pandan shot topped with whipped cream.

The server lit it on fire and quickly covered it with a glass and handed me a straw. She removed the glass, taking care to maintain the fumes.

I drank the shot. I had to cough as the Bacardi 151 and absinthe green hit the back of my throat.

I then inhaled the fumes from the upside down glass.

Tasted terrible. And it did go somewhat to my head, though I suspected the light-headedness was from the coughing because it only lasted for 30s. Hmmm… really wouldn’t drink it again. I like to enjoy my alcoholic beverages, not torture my throat with them.

Watch: Seiko Orange Monster

I’d been looking for a diver watch, and found the following:

The Seiko SKX781 Orange Monster

It’s an entry level automatic (translation: self-winding mechanical) diver watch by Seiko. It has all the requisite diver watch requirements: bright lume, unidirectional bevel, screw-in crown, solid stainless steel case.

Video – Call Day

A light-hearted look at the crushing feeling that we feel on call.

Drug-shock-drug-shock!

Older, Wiser, Happier

Hello all,

It’s been a ridiculous 8 months since my last update, and honestly I just haven’t had the energy or the inclination to do so.

Sometimes work gets you down, and all the altruism in the world won’t save you from burn out. But stop trying to see the world through rose-tinted glasses and see it for what it is, with all its faults and cracks, and just appreciate the little things around.

Life is good. As long as you don’t sweat the small stuff.

So I’m happier now.

I’ll resume posting.