Another wednesday

Today.. nothing much happened: only these:

1) Lab: Two titrations, done in duplicate.
Blunders: didn't add 50ml of water to my solution then was wondering why the thing remained cloudy when everyone else's was clear!! argh. then titrated all the way until endpoint = 19.0ml which was quite close to the original but asked Dr Chan to have a look and he said: "wahhh, like that ar, i dunno what endpoint is reached liao lei..." or something like that lar. wah so paiseh.

then #2: titration for thiosulphate and iodine. was happily doing the second thiosulphate titration, put the iodine liao and close to my first value of 43.5 ml and then... the burette leaked!!!! wtf!!!! i could have cried. all my hard work in prep the solution (it takes at least 20 minutes to prep one stupid flask) GONE! boohoo... the lab tech could just look at me and say.. "you're redoing?" yeah, sad fact.

#3. the two values didn't match very closely, about 0.4ml apart. shit = fake results.

2) NUH volunteering. Was still feeling nervous but always armed with the Nike slogan: just do it!!! went to talk to the patients before their dinner.

Was talking to an patient, clearly bedridden and having that dazed, sian diao look. intro myself and where i came from, SOP. asked if he'd liked to talk, SOP, as from nuan's mouth.

whatever followed was definitely not SOP.

he is clearly unresponsive, but damn, i haven't talked to a single soul in the ward yet and i might as well make this one my first. WRONG! so further i prompted, "are you bored? would u like to talk?" etc.

then, came the horrible thought that i suspected, that he could be having problems talking. maybe he had an op near his larnygeal area, or whatever. so i asked:

"can you talk?"

it was such a question so commonly used in SOAPs, e.g. to find out whether the patient is suffering from any laryngeal discomfort or wad... but as a volunteer... it is deeply insulting and inappropriate... would it suggest that he was dumb? or am i just simply laughing at his plight?

the moment these words came out of my mouth, i felt so stupid. how can i be so insensitive!!! but it was so reflex. i mean as a pharmacist... next time i will be asking people in such an "insensitive" manner.

but as a volunteer.. i guess i have no right to.

then i was thinking.. i could learn... i must learn. to switch between volunteer and pharmacist mode... to ask the right questions within the appropriate job scopes...

nuan asked me... do i want to volunteer? what do i want from volunteering?

answer: to learn something... soft skills.