Friday, July 21, 2006
~ Exercise Sparrowhawk II ~
8:57:00 pm
Exercise Sparrowhawk II... I'm quite sure you would have watched or heard the news or read in the newspaper about the pandemic flu exercise drill that would be going on today and tomorrow...
Each and every hospital was involved and of course, TTSH was not sparred especially since TTSH was, once upon a time, the SARS hospital...
11 am... The start of the drill... No announcement, nothing... It just started on the dot... Each and every frontline healthcare staff had to don a highly-flitrated N95 mask...
Anyway, pre-hand, we had to prepared all the gowns, gloves, alcohol wipes and handrubs outside of each cubicle...
The tedious job... We had to change our gowns after attending to one patient... And if we need attend to the next patient, we were required to remove our gown, do handwashing and don a new gown again... Mind you, it's not the normal type of gowns... It's the one with the long-sleeves which covers all the way to your wrists... Imagine having to spend time doing wound dressing for the patient, it was just very warm...
And the N95 mask... It was just super suffocating... Having to don the mask for 4 hours was bad enough... How about those who had to wear those masks during the SARS period? And they had to put them on throughout the whole shift... I really can't imagine...
But despite the tedious job that we had to go through, we actually did had quite a lot of fun... Especially when we need to get something, we will shout to the person outside to help us take something... In fact, it was very much enjoyable except for the part where we had to wear the full PPE (personal protective equipment)... Which was very-the-
leceh... And by the time we removed our masks, all of us had marks on our cheeks...
Anyway, thank goodness, I didn't have to take any cases today since I was appointed as 'the NO's assistant'... *Haha*... Of course I still helped with the nursing care and all... In fact, I actually helped to assist the doctors in a bone marrow aspiration procedure...
Anyway, the whole exercise will continue on till tomorrow... But again, thankfully, it's only up till 3pm... *Phew*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Had a karaoke session with Fione back on Wednesday... Well, it was my second time going for karaoke but hey, I enjoyed it! *Hehe*...
written, NaDiaH eRNiYaNTi
