Thursday, November 26, 2009

Take this prescription daily

All of us need this, so take a healthy dose daily...


Enjoy the meaning of this song "Because you loved me" beautifully sung by Celine Dion


For all those times you stood by me
For all the truth that you made me see
For all the joy you brought to my life
For all the wrong that you made right
For every dream you made come true
For all the love I found in you
I'll be forever thankful baby
You're the one who held me up
Never let me fall
You're the one who saw me through through it all


You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn't speak
You were my eyes when I couldn't see
You saw the best there was in me
Lifted me up when I couldn't reach
You gave me faith 'coz you believed
I'm everything I am
Because you loved me


You gave me wings and made me fly
You touched my hand I could touch the sky
I lost my faith, you gave it back to me
You said no star was out of reach
You stood by me and I stood tall
I had your love I had it all
I'm grateful for each day you gave me
Maybe I don't know that much
But I know this much is true
I was blessed because I was loved by you


You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn't speak
You were my eyes when I couldn't see
You saw the best there was in me
Lifted me up when I couldn't reach
You gave me faith 'coz you believed
I'm everything I am
Because you loved me


You were always there for me
The tender wind that carried me
A light in the dark shining your love into my life
You've been my inspiration
Through the lies you were the truth
My world is a better place because of you


You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn't speak
You were my eyes when I couldn't see
You saw the best there was in me
Lifted me up when I couldn't reach
You gave me faith 'coz you believed
I'm everything I am
Because you loved me


I'm everything I am
Because you loved me

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

This is a healthcare joke that got circulated.  It sounds ludicrous but true...

A woman brought a very limp duck to a veterinary surgeon.
As she laid her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird’s chest.
After a moment or two, the vet shook his head sadly and said, “I’m sorry, your duck, Cuddles, has passed away.”


The distressed woman wailed, “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am sure. Your duck is dead,” replied the vet.
“How can you be so sure?” she protested. 

“I mean you haven’t done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something.”


The vet rolled his eyes, turned around, and left the room.
He returned a few minutes later with a black Labrador Retriever.
As the duck’s owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front
paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He then looked up at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head. The vet patted the dog on the head and took it out of the room.

A few minutes later he returned with a cat. The cat jumped on the table and also delicately
sniffed the bird from head to foot. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly, and strolled out of the room.


The vet looked at the woman and said, “I’m sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100%
certifiably, a dead duck.”


The vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys, and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman.
The duck’s owner, still in shock, took the bill. “$150!” she cried, “$150 just to tell me my duck is dead!” 

The vet shrugged, “I’m sorry. If you had just taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20, but with the Lab Report and the Cat Scan, it’s now $150.” 

Learning from Bumrungrad Hospital


JGH Chairman Medical Board Prof Cheah WK taking notes of observations

The hospital planning team members asking lots of questions of our host

Unit Dose packing from Inpatient Pharmacy Automation deployment
at Bumrungrad to improve medication safety

The "ring" of medication for each patient

Work for the planning of the new Jurong General Hospital (JGH) has started a few months ago. In order to incorporate some of the best designs to improve patient experience/ safety and operational efficiency, we have set out to learn from the experiences of other hospitals in Singapore and overseas.

One hospital that we visited on Monday this week was Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok. They've recently completed a new outpatient building and incorporated flexible modular design at their clinics that would allow the facility to match the growth of clinical services workload - something that JGH was keen to find out.

As we walked around the hospital, one of the things that quickly struck the JGH team was how "calm and peaceful" their outpatient clinic setting was even though they were seeing some 3000 patients every day - more than some of Singapore public hospitals. A conversation with their Group CEO revealed careful planning with an eye for operational efficiency, crowd separation to various floors with deployment of technology to ensure one-stop service (eg. medication orders are routed by system to the pharmacy directly, medication prepared and sent back to the clinic floor by pneumatic tube system within minutes, and pharmacist will dispense to patient after payment), and intelligent queue management as critical success factors. All of these are very helpful in our planning for JGH.

Attention to details is evident throughout the hospital. Rubberised keyboards to facilitate cleaning are used in patient's room. Privacy curtains are neatly tucked behind a wall panel to present an uncluttered and restful space. Semi-automatic sliding doors are used at clinic consultation rooms to ensure minimal effort by nurses while gentle enough so that they do not produce any noise when they are shut tight. Integrated deployment of IT to achieve real-time visibility of a patient's journey and condition and others are just some of the many learning the JGH team brought home with us.

We were also quite amused that Bumrungrad hospital takes a picture of their patient during registration at the clinic. While walking through the clinic, we realised why is it important. Instead of calling patient by name or by their queue number, staff would look out for the patient based on their photo at the waiting area and usher him/ her into the consult room. How interesting?

Overall, we had a fantastic few hours of learning at Bumrungrad Hospital and awed by the hospitality of our hosts. The day trip was indeed worth it - not to mention the delicious Thai food that we managed to savour while waiting for our flight at the airport!