Chapter 254 - One glance, 30 seconds! (1/2)

Chapter 254: One glance, 30 seconds!

Modernization brought along countless conveniences, such as supermarkets and restaurants which were open 24 hours a day, or lights which would forever be turned on at nighttime. These were all evidence of a modernized country’s advancement.

Even in China’s rural villages, a large number of paved roads had been constructed. Dirt roads which would always turn extremely muddy in the rain were now a thing of the past. Highways were everywhere. Even though there was a distance of more than 100 kilometers from the small city hospital to the bigger Chasu City, the ambulance was able to swiftly go down the highway!

Although there was a speed limit on the highway, in China, special vehicles like ambulances didn’t have to obey the speed limit. The ambulances that China’s government issued to smaller city hospitals were all of good quality and had complete medical equipment! Some large-scale ambulances were even capable of acting as mobile platforms in which some emergency surgeries could be performed.

It took only 40ish minutes for the ambulance to arrive at Chasu City Hospital. What an amazing speed! However, the three nomads who were used to riding horses all became carsick! They were all really strong and muscular, yet all three of them vomited! They vomited lots of white milk all over the ambulance. It smelled like it was half fermented. Plus, there was heating inside the ambulance. The emergency nurse in the ambulance really wanted to cut off her nose!

Everything in China would slow down during the Spring Festival. Supermarkets and restaurants would be closed. The government would also be shut down. Every family would be enjoying the festive atmosphere as the Spring Festival was the biggest holiday in all of China.

On the third day of the Spring Festival, Zhang Fan was working a 24-hour shift at the infectious diseases department. Still, he would be paid extra for overtime during the holiday! His salary would be twice the normal amount. Although Chinese law stipulated that people be paid 3x the regular salary for overtime work during any holiday, people who really expected that would be naïve.

Normally, Chasu City Hospital would always be really busy, but during this time, there were incredibly few patients. All of the doctors were taking turns resting. The hospital had also stopped providing outpatient services during this time. All elective surgeries would be scheduled for after the Spring Festival was over. However, the emergency department’s lights would forever be on.

In the emergency department, there was a special machine at the front desk that would beep extremely loudly whenever an ambulance was about to arrive with an emergency patient. The emergency department’s doctors and nurses were currently eating lunch, but they all gathered together and simultaneously put down their chopsticks when they heard this beeping. They put on their caps and face masks in order to prepare to receive the patient.

This author doesn’t know about other industries, but in the medical field, the hospital superintendent and department director were highly important positions. While the Chinese government was indeed greatly supporting hospitals’ development, if there was a problem with the hospital leadership, then the government’s money would likely go to waste.

The hospital and its departments would also depend on the department members to all work hard together. But, if the path was chosen wrongly by the hospital leadership, then either all efforts would be wasted, or things would be really inefficient.

The emergency department at a major hospital would be a treatment center that combined diagnosis and treatment. Some emergency surgeries would directly be performed in the emergency department. If the emergency department was led by a powerful director, then that director would be capable of monopolizing many traumatic injury orthopedic surgeries and general surgeries.

However, Chasu City Hospital’s emergency department director had originally been a pediatrician. She was unable to obtain the position of pediatrics director, being unable to compete successfully with the current pediatrics director. Thus, she moved over to take the position of emergency department director that nobody else wanted. Pediatrics usually focused more on internal medicine specialties. There would be very few professional pediatric surgeons.

This was the weakness of older doctors in China’s medical system. The older doctors weren’t well developed in an overall manner. The emergency department director still had a pediatrician’s way of thinking even though she now led the emergency department. China’s government was greatly supporting the development of emergency treatment, but Chasu City Hospital’s emergency department hadn’t developed any surgeries at all. The most major surgical treatment they could provide was sewing sutures. If the injury was too severe or too deep, the emergency department would simply send the patient to the relevant department. This meant that its efficiency at providing immediate and emergency treatment for patients where every second mattered would be really low.

The only real specialty that the emergency department had under her leadership was performing gastric lavage, also known as stomach pumping.

Back before the 1990s, anyone who drank an insecticide to commit suicide wouldn’t need to be brought to the hospital. They would die before any treatment was possible! Pesticides in China back then were all really strong. For example, dichlorvos, also known as DDVP insecticide, would kill you within three steps if you drank it! It would be impossible for anyone to save you.

Nowadays, there were more regulations on insecticides, so insecticides were now weaker than before. To be quite blunt, if you drank an insecticide in the year 2010, you likely wouldn’t die right away, but you would be in great pain. You would be brought over to the hospital for stomach pumping.

If the insecticide was a weak acid or some compound that wouldn’t react with alkali, then it would be really painful for you. Soap water would be used! The hospital’s soap water wouldn’t be anything grand. It would be the same common type of soap that people would wash clothes with. After dissolving the soap water, it would directly be forcibly injected into the stomach in a large amount in order to induce powerful vomiting. You would feel as if you were vomiting up your gall bladder. Stomach pumping would be as painful as torture.

Normally, those who tried to commit suicide by insecticide would be housewives. After being saved by stomach pumping once, they would no longer try to drink insecticide again, because stomach pumping was far too painful. It would make them never want to see soap again in their lives!

Ake was brought to the emergency department. His emergency routine blood test showed no abnormalities. He had already received basic treatment at the smaller city hospital.

Many illnesses, especially stomach problems, would greatly resemble each other. If the routine tests didn’t come back with a positive identification, then it really would be difficult to diagnose the patient’s problem.

If a doctor was capable of diagnosing a rare disease that wasn’t seen often, then either this doctor had recently diagnosed someone with similar symptoms, or the doctor had previously experienced the same disease themselves before! The rarest situation of all was that the doctor was truly amazing. Normally, a doctor would require some time in order to accurately diagnose an illness.

Relying on symptoms? Many illnesses would have incredibly similar symptoms. For instance, if you had a fever, maybe you would take some standard fever medicine at home, and a smaller hospital would give you some antibiotics. All of this would actually interfere with being able to accurately diagnose the true problem. Without practical clinical experience, even a doctorate degree student looking at their textbook would be unable to accurately diagnose your problem.

Ake was currently in such a situation! Still, the emergency department had its own way of dealing with this. Since they were unable to identify his problem, they would simply summon doctors from other hospital departments over to diagnose the patient!

Since it was the Spring Festival holiday, none of the department directors and veteran doctors were on duty, unless the department was really tiny and lacked personnel. When the emergency department summoned other departments’ doctors over for a consultation, only young doctors arrived! Young doctors would be made to work overtime over the veteran doctors who would instead enjoy their holiday. Well, this was simply how any workplace was. Those who were younger and less experienced would always be made to do more work.

The doctors from the respiratory department and general surgery department looked over the patient for quite a while, but were unable to identify the patient’s problem. A physical examination for the patient had determined that Ake’s fever was at 40 degrees Celsius, and that he had some skin macules on his body. However, his pulse and blood pressure were quite normal. This really puzzled the young doctors. What illness could this possibly be? Other checkup results wouldn’t be out so swiftly.