By Cao Yuhan (24S03M) and Syaura Nashwa (24S03R)
“Antsy people are not the nicest people, and it will get challenging. Every day at work will never be the same, but we adjust accordingly,” says Mr Benedict Choong, a nurse at Tan Tock Seng Hospital and also an alum of Raffles Institution.
Benedict graduated in 2015, took BCME and was from 15S03M.
Nursing at Tan Tock Seng is his first job, having stayed with the same hospital ever since his time as a student intern.
Throughout his entire journey in healthcare, he has faced numerous challenges, be it from the daily struggle of rushing between departments or reassuring a patient’s anxious loved ones when they learn of the patient’s diagnosis.
In spite of these struggles, it is the sheer joy of making a difference that motivates nurses like Benedict to keep on caring for their patients.
“I love talking and listening to my patients. It’s through these small conversations where they share their concerns and I’ll think of different solutions to address those problems.”
“There’s this sense of gratification knowing that you managed to make their hospital stay slightly better.”
The Nurse’s Routine
In the surgical ward, most of Benedict’s patients are on intravenous antibiotics and have surgical wounds. Nurses have the job of changing intravenous cannulas and doing wound dressings.
It’s the norm for nurses to work almost twelve hours a day. Usually, nurses work in shifts: AM (7am-3pm), PM (1pm-9pm) and night shifts (8pm-8am).
Out of all these shifts, however, mornings are the busiest and most challenging. Most changes are ordered in the morning by the medical team. Nurses take vital signs, serve medications, and provide hygiene care. For patients who can’t eat on their own, it’s the nurses who have to feed them as well.
It’s known that night shifts are the “easiest” unless a patient’s condition changes. Take low blood pressure, for example. When that happens, Benedict will have to alert the on-call doctors to review the patient’s condition.
However, the night shifts for Benedict are almost always eventful—whether by a stroke of luck, or sheer coincidence; he is not sure. For most of his colleagues, night shifts are uneventful, but his shifts often look like: “many admissions overnight [and] many intravenous antibiotics to administer”. (Funnily enough, this is why most colleagues dread working night shifts alongside him.)
The Nurse’s Role
Benedict embarked on his journey of service through his time as a member of Raffles Interact.
Deep down, he had always known that he wasn’t interested in a desk-bound job, leading him to look towards fields that were more dynamic in nature. One of these fields happened to be healthcare.
With the intent of exploring the processes and work environment in healthcare, he started job shadowing with Tan Tock Seng Hospital before applying to universities.
When asked about the experience, he mentioned that it had “opened [his] eyes to nursing and how relevant… [it] is in healthcare.” In fact, it was this very experience that steered him towards applying for university courses related to healthcare.
At this point, however, Benedict faced the difficult choice of choosing between physiotherapy and nursing—a dilemma that plagues most healthcare-aspiring students.
But ultimately, nursing felt like his calling. Benedict’s experience as an intern led him to be more appreciative of the multiple hats nurses had to wear.
- The Patient’s Advocate
Nurses suggest any changes to the medical team in their patient’s best interest. “For a non-diabetic patient, we can suggest changing the frequency of blood sugar monitoring so we don’t have to keep pricking the patient’s finger.”
- The Gatekeeper
Similar to what is often portrayed in medical K-dramas (think Hospital Playlist, or Doctor Romantic), the patient’s loved ones may bombard nurses with questions that cover all the 5W1s and 1H. Nurses are the last point of contact at every patient encounter. They must know the dosage for every medication given to their patients and relate it to their patient’s condition. “It takes a sharp nurse to decide whether [a medication] is safe or suitable to be served. For a patient with diarrhoea but with laxatives as an active order, it’s on the nurse to not serve the laxatives and monitor further.”
- The Conductor
Picture the healthcare industry as an orchestra.
Within the healthcare orchestra, nurses play the role of conductors, orchestrating the collaboration of diverse groups of people—doctors, staff, and families. Their skilful guidance results in a melodious symphony, harmonising care, healing, and well-being for patients. They keep track of the inputs of different allied health professionals, pulling them in to review as necessary.
“For instance, for a patient with swallowing problems, when nurses feed the patient and note that they are not tolerating the recommended diet consistency, we drop the speech therapist a message and request for them to review.”
Ups and Downs
When asked about the biggest accomplishment in his career, Benedict’s reply warmed all of our hearts.
“Patients with dementia do not have the best oral intake, so we struggle to feed them,” he recounted. “One patient was eating very little. One day when I was in charge of him, he mistook me for his grandson and I managed to coax him into eating a full share of his lunch. After he was discharged, I shed a few tears.”
To care deeply for strangers is truly awe-inspiring. However, social workers do not have it easy. Oftentimes, their care goes unappreciated.
Nurses are generally misrepresented as secondary to doctors, and hence are typically not held up to the same level of respect as other healthcare workers.
Benedict opened up about one of toughest experiences he had with his patients’ family members. “A patient’s family member once shouted at me because she demanded to speak to the doctor, even though I had updated her on the treatment plans from the morning rounds. When the doctor update[d] her, he communicated similar things but [she] was more satisfied, even thanking him for his time.”
In his opinion, it is very demoralising for nurses when the public views them merely as helpers, ignoring their valuable skills and expertise. However, this is precisely because most people are unaware of the challenging and technical parts of the job.
Additionally, in a female-dominated profession, male nurses may find the job difficult when patients stereotype males to be uncaring and less attentive. Benedict, however, does not find that his gender puts him at a disadvantage.
“I also work in an orthopaedics ward. Male nurses are very welcomed here since we need a lot of strength to move patients who are admitted and are bed-bound before going for surgery.”
Empowering the Unsung Workers
Nursing is a career that is growing in popularity within Singapore. (Source: ST Times, Today Online). Nurses enjoy better opportunities to advance their career, even at the frontline of healthcare.
In fact, nurses are increasingly empowered to be involved in curating treatment plans, due to a greater focus on inter-professional collaboration.
Benedict hopes for more people to know that nurses play a plethora of roles, beyond what is typically imagined of them as mere caretakers.
“Nurses are no longer handmaidens to the medical team; we have much more autonomy as compared to the past.” Benedict says. “We learn so much in terms of breadth given how we are expected to liaise with various healthcare disciplines.”
While he was a student intern, a colleague of Benedict’s once shared, “More of us ought to realise that: ‘Not all illnesses have a cure, that’s why we have nurses.’”