Chapter 200: The importance of safety measures!
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu
Zhang Fan couldn’t allow himself to be defeated by the endocrinology department. He successfully conquered an English medical textbook that no ordinary rotation doctor would have been able to handle. You would only receive respect and acceptance for having actual skills and working incredibly hard.
Workplaces where skills were the most important would be relatively simple. Although some people at such a workplace would have a bad temper, very few would try to intentionally target someone who was known to be highly skilled. However, if a highly skilled person was instead at a Chinese workplace that was more focused on ideology, bullies would instantly come out from everywhere to teach you not to stand out and attract too much attention to yourself!
Zhang Fan finally finished his rotation in the endocrinology department in winter when there was already lots of snowfall. In addition to the endocrinology department, he had now been through three other major internal medicine departments.
The cardiology department had truly taught then-still-newbie Zhang Fan just how tense medical work could be. The fragility of human life was fully on display in the cardiology department where multiple patients might die in a single night. That was where he really experienced how difficult the job of doctor was.
The respiratory department had showed him a choking feeling. Cough! Cough! Cough! There were skinny old men who constantly coughed up phlegm to the point where their face would go pale. They would greedily try and inhale every bit of oxygen that they could. The flu season was just like a harvester that would harvest countless older people who wouldn’t make it past winter.
The gastroenterology department was the internal medicine department in charge of the most organs. In a way, this department also showed the change in Chinese lifestyle. In the past, virus type cirrhosis of the liver had been more common, but now, it was far more common for cirrhosis to be caused by alcoholism. Plenty of elite workers in various job fields would work quite hard, but pay little attention to their body, and thus end up as a patient in the gastroenterology department.
Zhang Fan was now rotated to a rather special department, the ICU department. ICU stood for intensive care unit, which meant that this department was focused on special care for patients in severe condition. In this department, the cost of care would be equal to the medicine fees. This could help you to imagine how hard the work was for the doctors and nurses in this department.
In Chasu City Hospital, the ICU department was connected to the operating rooms. Any patients in serious condition or who had undergone a major surgery would be sent here.
The ICU department was the most modernized department in the hospital. Although this department was a new one that had been developed for less than 30 years, rapid and obvious improvements were being made. The most advanced medical equipment, combined with personalized treatment and care, really would have the effect of helping to revive patients who were on the brink of death. However, there would still be one problem with this department. The medical fees for staying here were really high! Out of all the hospital departments, the ICU department was one of the most expensive for patients to stay in.
In the ICU department, you would have medical equipment monitoring you 24/7 and personalized treatment and care. This would cost a large amount on a daily basis. For an average patient, it would cost more than 10,000 yuan per day to stay here. Additionally, this was only the cost for average patients in ICU, meaning that patients in even more severe condition would have to pay additional fees.
The ICU department didn’t have many doctors. There were also few older doctors in this department because the ICU department was one of the newest major departments in Chasu City Hospital, meaning it lacked a solid foundation. Many modern medical technologies still hadn’t been developed for use at Chasu City Hospital yet.
The director of the ICU department was named Lin Long. In Chinese, Long meant dragon, which was quite a domineering name, but in reality, Director Lin was a middle-aged man in his 40s who was rather short. He also had a mild temper and was the quiet type. He would often stand in the middle of the ICU department and say in a gentle and slow tone, “You must be careful and pay attention. This department is the final battleground for the hospital. If we’re unable to protect them, then there will be no more hope for the patients!”
Due to the special nature of the patients in the ICU departments, doctors in this department weren’t individually in charge of different patients like how things would be in other departments. All the patients would be dealt with and overseen by all doctors together. For instance, if you were the doctor in charge for a 24-hour shift today, then you would be the primary doctor for all patients in the ICU department today.
What did it mean to be the primary doctor in charge of all the patients in the ICU department? For today’s shift, you would need to be in charge of all the patients’ medical records, death reports, discharge paperwork, or hospitalization paperwork. If you were unlucky, maybe you would meet with three deaths, three ICU patients being discharged, and three new ICU patients being hospitalized during your 24-hour shift. Congratulations then! You wouldn’t be able to even dream about getting any sleep for the entire 24 hours. If something suddenly happened to a patient, and the patient required immediate emergency treatment, then congratulations, you would probably need to work overtime for another eight hours on top of the 24-hour shift.
Labor laws? Unions? Such things would only be for other countries, not for a Chinese hospital. In China, the unions’ greatest responsibilities would be to issue some new shoes to nurses on International Nurses Day, issue some cooking oil and noodles on New Year’s, and the trade union leader would attend a marriage and represent the hospital in congratulating any doctor or nurse who got married. That was all that medical unions in China did. You wanted overtime pay? Or human rights? So, you wanted to be fired, then? If you didn’t want the job, then get the hell out! There would be countless young fresh graduates waiting in line for your job every year!
The hospital administration department even called Zhang Fan to discuss his rotation now that he was finished with the endocrinology department. As Zhang Fan’s status in Chasu City Hospital was constantly rising, it was now at the point where the vice director of the hospital administration department, who was in charge of rotations, would personally discuss Zhang Fan’s rotation with him.
This was because Zhang Fan’s situation was too unique. Such a thing hadn’t happened in Chasu City Hospital for so long already. Normally, departments would say that they lacked personnel and needed more rotation doctors, but Zhang Fan couldn’t be sent in such a situation. That was because Zhang Fan might suddenly be needed for some surgery, and by now, ordinary doctors didn’t dare to act as Zhang Fan’s teaching doctor anymore.
Zhang Fan had given a two-and-a-half-hour lecture on the pancreas in the endocrinology department. This instantly gave him a great deal of status in the internal medicine departments. Zhang Fan had to be truly skilled in order to give a lecture to so many smart individuals for so long. So, by now, Zhang Fan would be allowed to choose his own department rather than end with any department choosing Zhang Fan.
However, Zhang Fan didn’t care about which department he was rotated to. He figured that he would need to learn and rotate through everything regardless, so the order wouldn’t matter. The hospital administration department vice director thought about it for quite a while before placing Zhang Fan in the ICU department, which was a department with a relatively higher number of rotation doctors.
The ICU department would forever be bright as the lights were permanently turned on here. Including the ICU department director, there were currently seven doctors permanently assigned here, and more than 20 nurses. All of the nurses were relatively young. This was because it would really be difficult for any nurse over 30 years old to handle the work in the ICU department in addition to trying to raise children or take care of elders. The ICU department was also the department with the highest rate of having nurses resign. If a nurse reached a certain age and was unable to get transferred to a different department, the nurse would only be able to resign and quietly leave as if she had never been here!
Although those with official positions and those without had the same work and salary, there was still a large difference between the two. Previously, hospitals would still have some official positions for nurses, but official positions were becoming more and more precious these days, and hospitals would rarely have official positions for nursing care. As time went on, this industry was becoming less and less attractive, just like how America was perpetually short of nurses. There were also so many African-Americans and Asian-Americans working as nurses there! Maybe the nursing industry would one day be replaced by robot nurses once robots were advanced enough.
As always, Zhang Fan received a three-day vacation before his next rotation. He used this time to rest since he had been incredibly busy recently. Wang Yongyong’s postoperative care had taken up much of his time. That was because Zhang Fan needed to personally check up on Wang Yongyong throughout the entire process. A professional athlete’s body would be too different from a normal person’s, so special sports medicine knowledge would be needed.
Zhang Fan also had lots of work performing surgeries at other hospitals in the smaller cities around Chasu City. The surgical directors of Chasu City Hospital no longer tried to compete with Zhang Fan about getting extra work. Zhang Fan had already monopolized the entire surgery market in Chasu City. Before, the directors had more surgeries due to being more well-known, but now, the directors barely had any leftover surgeries to perform. Zhang Fan was still young. He was capable of performing five or six surgeries per day quite easily on his days off. The surgical directors were all older, and wouldn’t have the stamina to perform that many surgeries in a single day. Not only that, Zhang Fan would always split his surgery fee with the local hospital’s doctors. Of course this would make him a more popular choice.
Even with the help of his System, Zhang Fan would need to occasionally rest. Otherwise, he would be far too fatigued. Even robots needed to stop and recharge, after all. Not to mention, Zhang Fan had a mere physical body.
Zhang Fan also had a weekend in addition to his three-day vacation. After dealing with various small matters on the first two days, he took a long sleep for the first time in two years, sleeping more than 10 hours in one go.
Shao Hua was also off from work on the weekend. She recommended that they go skiing. Chasu city had many natural snowy mountains. It was said that only some slight work would be needed to meet international skiing standards. The snow here was completely natural, not artificial. It would be no problem to fill entire mountain valleys with all the snow in the mountains during winter.
It would be more fun to ski with more people. Shao Hua invited Jia Suyue and Wang Yanan, while Zhang Fan brought Li Liang along.
Jia Suyue was still in a bad mood recently. She finally officially broke up with Le Jie in the end, so she was rather downcast. Shao Hua really wanted to help Jia Suyue cheer up.
Wang Yanan was currently doing alright in orthopedic department #1. However, orthopedic surgery was a department which really required physical stamina. Wang Yanan was having some slight difficulty on this front. Her current relationship with Li Liang was rather ambiguous at the moment.
The nearest skiing place was still quite some distance away, so Zhang Fan drove everyone in his car. On the way, the women started chatting with each other, which helped Jia Suyue to temporarily forget her pain from heartbreak.
“Bro, is President Ma about to do something major with his hospital?” Li Liang inquired. He knew quite well about Zhang Fan’s relationship with Ma Wentao.
“You really do know a lot! He’s preparing to add more employees to his hospital and slowly increase the scale of his business. President Ma is quite ambitious.” Zhang Fan knew that it wouldn’t be proper to spill Ma Wentao’s business plans on opening a second hospital to Li Liang.
“Zhang Fan, when are you going to choose a department to join permanently? The medical license exam results for this year should be out soon. I bet that many new doctors will want to join the orthopedic departments. There are also many graduate students sticking around the orthopedic directors every day. You need to pay more attention to this. Don’t wait only to find that you can’t enter the orthopedic departments; there is only a limited number of positions,” Wang Yanan told Zhang Fan.
“Alright, I’ll pay more attention.” Actually, Zhang Fan didn’t care about this at all, but he was grateful for Wang Yanan’s good intentions.
Everyone had fun chatting together. They then arrived at the skiing place in the mountains. Here in the border province, the skiing place was quite simple. They simply constructed an electric chairlift for transporting customers up the mountain on a mountain slope with lots of snow. A few areas were then marked for skiing. The skiing place then hired some nomads who didn’t have work to do during winter as coaches and employees. There was also a large tent at the foot of the mountain where they served the Chinese dish “big plate of chicken” for 300 yuan. This would be quite profitable during winter.
This skiing place required only a low investment and brought decent profit, and since it was located in the mountainous area, it would easily dodge government inspections. For small businesses like this, the government wouldn’t be bothered to care. Only larger businesses would attract the government’s attention. Without commenting on whether this was good or bad, government inspections would at least help make these types of places safer.
Younger people in the border province were often expert skiers. This was because there were far too many mountainous slopes to ski on. It would be common for them to be skilled at other similar winter sports like ice climbing due to growing up in such a snowy environment.
However, Zhang Fan was different. Although he was also from northwestern China, his hometown would never have such major snowfall. This was his first time to ever try skiing. He didn’t dare to go to the very top of the mountain and ski down at lightning speed like the others. He instead chose to get off halfway on the mountain and slide down slowly.
Although skiing appeared to be smooth and easy, it was quite difficult when trying it for himself. Zhang Fan constantly tripped and fell even when starting from halfway on the mountain. After a while, he gave up and exchanged his skis for a sled. He felt that it was too embarrassing for him to ski. There were even some elementary school girls on the mountain slope who were better skiers than he was.
Zhang Fan decided to simply act as a photographer and take pictures for everyone else. When Shao Hua saw that Zhang Fan was no longer skiing, she also exchanged for a sled to accompany Zhang Fan.
“You should go have fun. I have no interest in this, but you shouldn’t pass up on having fun just because of me, especially since we rarely get to go out like this,” Zhang Fan told her.
“Not at all. I’m really happy whenever I’m by your side.”
Zhang Fan couldn’t help but pull Shao Hua into his embrace when he heard this.
“Hurry and let me go! Others can see us here! It’s annoying!” Shao Hua’s face was rather red from the winter chill. Zhang Fan really wanted to bite down!
There were several hundred people on the mountain slope. Many of them were expert skiers. There were also plenty of children. The younger children were having lots of fun screaming and yelling while sliding down the mountain slope in old car tires. At Zhang Fan’s current skill level, that was all he was capable of. However, only young children were sliding down in car tires, so he was too embarrassed to try this!
At this moment, the chairlift suddenly stopped working with a loud boom! Many people on the chairlift fell off. Since everyone was wearing thick clothes for winter, and they also had skis on, it was rather difficult for them to get up from the snow. A lot of crying and screaming could now be heard.
This mountain’s slope was somewhat steep. The chairlift also wasn’t very wide. It would be difficult to go and help the injured skiers. At this time, a woman ran out from the chairlift’s generator room while screaming, “Save him! Save him! Bayan was electrocuted! Someone hurry and come!”
Bayan was a temporary electrician who worked at this ski place, operating the chairlift. However, he had never undergone professional training before. Due to making a mistake with the controls, he had accidentally electrocuted himself.
Zhang Fan immediately rushed over to the generator room when he heard this. Meanwhile, the younger people who had fallen off the chairlift were already beginning to stand up. They started to help out the others who were still stuck in the snow.
“Where’s the power source? Where’s the main power source? Hurry and turn off the electricity!” Zhang Fan shouted as he ran.
Many people would suffer electrocution every year. When treating electrocution patients, the most urgent thing would be to first turn off the source of electricity, or to use something with electric insulation to help the victim be removed from the electric source. Otherwise, those trying to help the electrocution patient might also suffer electrocution as well.
Electrocution injuries were highly complex. The amount of damage to the body would depend on factors such as the voltage, type of current, strength of the current, frequency, how long the person was in contact with the electricity, where the electric current passed through in the body, the environment in which the person was electrocuted, and so on. In most households, low-frequency electric currents would easily cause ventricular fibrillation, which would be extremely dangerous. That was why it would always be important to remain careful around electric outlets in your home.
Every year, electric companies would organize professional emergency training sessions for their employees on how to treat electrocution victims. Due to this repeating itself over the years, electric companies had finally managed to surpass hospitals in expertise on treating electrocution. This was because the hospitals would typically only have the emergency department and a few other relevant departments with the professional knowledge necessary to speedily and accurately save electrocution patients.
Treating electrocution wouldn’t be as simple as using the same treatment for all patients. You would have to customize the treatment based on the environment. It would always be especially important to first confirm if there was still electricity in the environment before trying to save an electrocution victim. It would be highly dangerous for you to try saving someone if you didn’t have proper training regarding electrocution!
Zhang Fan kept shouting to turn off the power as he ran over. In the distance, someone who appeared to be a manager at the ski place shouted back, “The power is off already! It’s off already!”
Shao Hua ran closely after Zhang Fan towards the generator room. She couldn’t rest assured. Although she didn’t know anything about electrocution, as she had gone to college before, of course she would understand the dangers involved with electric leakage. Zhang Fan had already run off, and it would be impossible to stop him. Still, people would always be selfish! There was nothing wrong with reflexively wanting to protect something you loved.
However, the nature of Zhang Fan’s job meant that he would never allow himself to retreat. If Zhang Fan hadn’t been a doctor, maybe he wouldn’t have tried to save this person. There would be nothing wrong with that. But as a doctor, with a patient in danger right in front of him and requiring professional treatment, if he didn’t stand up here at this time, he felt that he wouldn’t deserve the job title of doctor.
Although Chinese society had many problems regarding doctors currently, that would still only involve a small portion of doctors. Doctors were still a respectable group. You shouldn’t deny the efforts of a majority just because of a minority.
Zhang Fan did his best to run at top speed, but it was rather difficult to run in the snow. Zhang Fan tripped several times even though there was only a short 200 meters to the generator room. However, he couldn’t care about this anymore, because he saw that a woman was crying while holding on to the electrocuted electrician.
Zhang Fan’s hands were injured by tree branches in the snow. Lots of snow also entered his boots. Zhang Fan rolled around on the ground while crawling, and finally wretchedly made it to the patient’s side. He kept panting as he told the woman, “Hurry and lay him down flat!”
“Okay!” The woman didn’t actually react because she was too busy being shocked.
“Lay him flat! I need to save him. I’m a doctor.”
“Oh! A doctor! Doctor, please save him!” The woman’s eyes filled with tears as she pitifully looked at Zhang Fan while crying after she put the man flat on the ground.
“Shut up!” Zhang Fan was too anxious right now to have the time to explain things properly to her.
In the distance, Li Liang and Wang Yanan had also noticed Zhang Fan running towards the generator room. The two of them hurried over to help out as well. Li Liang was a man, so he soon left Wang Yanan quite a distance behind him. Every second would matter when saving someone. Li Liang couldn’t care about letting Wang Yanan keep up right now.
For this type of emergency treatment, it would be necessary to place the patient on a flat surface. That was because of the major force required in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. If the patient was on an incline of even five centimeters, it would often happen that the resuscitation would break some of the patient’s rib bones. Thus, if the patient wasn’t on a flat surface, a broken rib bone might then penetrate the lung. The patient who was already in danger would then be in an even worse condition.
“Hurry and call the hospital!” Zhang Fan shouted to Shao Hua in the distance running after him as he kneeled by the patient’s side and performed cardiac compressions.
Zhang Fan’s tone was extremely urgent. This made Shao Hua really anxious as well. This was how lovers were. Their feelings would be connected. Although Shao Hua didn’t know how much danger the patient was in, she could sense the anxiety in Zhang Fan’s voice.
Shao Hua’s voice sounded like she was about to cry as she shouted back to Zhang Fan, “There’s no cell phone signal here!”
“Damn it!” Zhang Fan felt like he was about to collapse.
This patient had been electrocuted on his right hand, which was already blackening. His right hand’s middle finger seemed like it was carbonizing. At such a location, Zhang Fan would only be able to perform basic pulmonary resuscitation. This was probably payback from the heavens for not properly following the government’s safety measures regarding electricity. This would be no joke!
“How are things?” Li Liang overtook Shao Hua and arrived at Zhang Fan’s side first while panting heavily.
“First perform pulmonary resuscitation, 30 to 1. I’ll press first, then we’ll switch!” Zhang Fan swiftly performed cardiac compressions.
Pulmonary resuscitation was extremely tiring physically. You would have to maintain your speed as well as force and frequency. Normal youngsters wouldn’t be able to do this. Most youngsters would hurriedly start but immediately lose stamina after just three compressions.
Proper training would be necessary. If young people had to undergo pulmonary resuscitation training every year, then perhaps many people’s lives would be saved each year.