Witnesses Of Life<\/p>\n
Have you visited any Intensive Care Units (ICUs) before?\u00a0 Even if you have not, you may have had a glance of them on television programmes.\u00a0 What impression have ICUs given you?\u00a0 Mysterious?\u00a0 Deadly?<\/p>\n
Young Post meets Bridget Chan, a doctor working at the ICU of Prince of Wales Hospital, to have a closer look at ICUs as well as the work of ICU doctors.<\/p>\n
Qualifications<\/p>\n
The first step of becoming an ICU doctor is of course to obtain a degree in Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery just like all other doctors.\u00a0 The second step is to become a fellow of either Anaesthesiology or Medicine.\u00a0 Then, specialist degrees in Intensive Care, Cardiology, etc. are needed.\u00a0 Usually, an ICU doctor has one to three specialist degrees.\u00a0 Just like Chan, after getting a degree in MBChB, she worked on to become a Fellow of Hong Kong Academy of Medicine (Medicine) while working as a doctor, afterwards, she gained specialist degrees in both Critical Care Medicine and Respiratory Medicine through four years of further studies and training.\u00a0 Still, Chan admits there are much more to learn as there are new discoveries continuously, and she needs to update her knowledge from time to time for the sake of the health of patients.\u00a0 There is no easy way to become an ICU doctor.<\/p>\n
Requirements<\/p>\n
An ICU doctor should be professional and decisive at all times.\u00a0 There are lots of machines operating in ICUs, however, beeping does not necessarily indicate that a patient need further treatments.\u00a0 ICU doctors need to consider whether a patient requires help by looking at and interpreting the reading of apparatus, such as the vital signs including pulse, blood oxygen content, blood pressure, intracranial pressure and respiratory rate, making use of their expertise.\u00a0 Emergencies can happen in ICUs at any moment, for instance, a patient may suddenly get cardiac arrest.\u00a0 When coping with such situations, ICU doctors need to make the right decisions quickly, including knowing the problems suffered by the patients, providing them with suitable treatments…\u00a0 The life of patients is at risk and whether they can stay alive or not depend heavily on ICU doctors.\u00a0 If any mistakes are made, no matter big or small, or the decisions are made late, it may lead to the death of patients.\u00a0 To be a responsible ICU doctor, professionalism and decisiveness are crucial.<\/p>\n
An ICU doctor should also be patient and caring.\u00a0 When patients get into ICUs, their situation is really bad.\u00a0 And seeing patients suffering and seemingly dying, the relatives are much more worried than those in other departments.\u00a0 Sometimes, when the machines beep once or the readings of them changes a bit, they already chase after ICU doctors for help.\u00a0 ICU doctors need to understand that the relatives do not have professional knowledge and are really anxious, and then explain to them the condition of patients and how the apparatus work to relieve their tension.\u00a0 And death does happen in ICUs, and maybe of the greatest number, although about eighty percent of patients can leave ICUs. \u00a0The relatives of dead patients are in the state of squeamishness.\u00a0 Even though ICU doctors are not responsible for comforting the relatives, speaking in a warming voice can become a comfort.\u00a0 To be a good ICU doctor, patience and a warming heart is essential.<\/p>\n
Of course, an ICU doctor should love taking up new challenges.\u00a0 ICUs are places where nobody can predict what will happen in the next second and challenges pop up.\u00a0 According to Chan, conservative people can hardly become an ICU doctor because not any ICU doctors can escape from challenges and making changes.<\/p>\n
Work Prospects<\/p>\n
As Chan stresses, being an ICU doctor, saving the life of people is the ultimate concern, salary is not quite meaningful.<\/p>\n
Attaining advanced knowledge can be one of the work prospects of an ICU doctor.\u00a0 ICU doctors often get to know the latest knowledge faster than doctor of other departments.\u00a0 Chan gives the example of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO).\u00a0 ECMO was first used in 2009 for curing human swine influenza patients in ICUs.\u00a0 It was a rather new technology at that time and ICU doctors were those trying ECMO at the beginning.\u00a0 It is an exciting experience to be among those getting their hands on advanced equipment first, tells Chan.<\/p>\n
Being promoted to be the head of the department can be a long-term prospect.\u00a0 However, along with promotion, the workload is increased as well.\u00a0 The head of ICUs may be called for work outside their working hours, for example.\u00a0 Though, being the head is much a great honour.<\/p>\n
A Day At Work<\/p>\n
In television programmes, it is said that doctors have to on call for thirty-six hours.\u00a0 However, it is not the case for ICU doctors.\u00a0 The normal working hours of ICU doctors is sixteen hours, during weekends, it is twenty-four hours.\u00a0 The work of ICU doctors starts with discussion of the situation of patients with doctors of the earlier round.\u00a0 After that, they examine the patients one by one.\u00a0 When needed, they adjust the treatments given to patients to improve their condition.\u00a0 Besides taking care of patients in ICUs, ICU doctors need to do consultation in other departments.\u00a0 They also need to take care of serious cases in Accident and Emergency.\u00a0 In the evening, they have to talk to the relatives of patients to let them know the latest situation.\u00a0 Being an ICU doctor is no easy job, says Chan, it requires lots of stamina, but seeing patients getting better, all hardships are worthy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Witnesses Of LifHave you visited any Intensive Care Units (ICUs) before?\u00a0 Even if you have not, you may have had a glance of them on television programmes.\u00a0 What impression have ICUs given you?\u00a0 Mysterious?\u00a0 DeadlyYoung Post meets Bridget Chan, a doctor working at the ICU of Prince of Wales Hospit.........Read More<\/a>","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":8474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","language-en","classlevel-s5","schoolyear-38"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5193,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5192\/revisions\/5193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}