A new concept to try for scrub caps

Reversible caps!

I made these caps with half a metre of fabric each, and ended up having about a third of the fabric left over -- not enough to make another set, but too much to go into my scraps drawer. So, I started thinking about making a reversible hat to use up the fabric, and also as an exercise. It definitely took a lot longer than usual, about twice as long I think. But, I'm pretty happy with the results of my first attempt. If I were to do it again, I'd probably leave a long strip from each fabric when I was making the first set of hats, so I can use that as my trim for the hat today. The black definitely looks too heaving on the light coloured fabric. However, black was the only colour I had lying around!

Back from vacation!

Fa la la la la la, la la la!

Went to Washington D.C. for a short vacation. It was pretty awesome! I visited the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, which were the two things I really really wanted to see. Since I wasn't American, I'd have had to contact my embassy to arrange for a White House visit six months in advance for a tour. Six months ago I didn't even know I was going to be taking a vacation! So that didn't happen, which was OK since it actually wasn't on my top list of things to do or see. I did want to see the Capitol, which was unfortunately under construction because their iron dome is no longer rust proof and chunks has been falling off. So our tour was slightly abbreviated, and the majority of the dome was covered up by scaffolding. I did see a statue of Dr. Crawford Long from Georgia, who was explained to me as the father of anaesthesia. Preposterous! I thought. Everyone knows that Dr. Morton was the father of anaesthesia, and the first to use ether successfully in an operation. Alas, Wikipedia has proven me wrong! I also have learned that as with many discoveries in history, several people arrived at the same conclusions at similar times separately, and the use of ether as an anaesthetic has been done by not only Dr. Long, Dr. Morton, Dr. Clarke, but also Dr. Horace Wells. Cool beans!

Trying something new

Super bear!

A friend asked me to make a hat from the Marvel superheroes fabric I got awhile back. Actually made this about a week ago, but just remembered to post this now. This was kind of tricky because I was slightly stingy and didn't want to double layer the fabric for the front piece since they would look funky when flipped over (black looks much better), and I would be able to make less hats from what I have! So, there was some creative sewing and folding involved to make sure the black edge looked sharp still. I actually ended up sewing down the folded edge with black thread to avoid the hassle of refolding if the hat gets washed, and to make sure the fold lays down neatly. Took a bit longer, but I'm pretty happy with the result!

Double trouble

Sleeping giraffes

One more on top!

A friend asked me to make some scrub hats for her, and provided me with half a meter of each. I'm getting much faster at constructing these! Now they are done in slightly more than an hour, instead of the 3 hours I started out with. Practice makes perfect! Now if only I can extend that to anaesthesia reading...

So my two cases for tomorrow were all inpatient. I discovered this after getting home from teaching. Initially, I wasn't going to go back, since my first patient was seen the day before and had a pre-op assessment completed. Unfortunately, my second patient was still hanging out in the ER due to lack of floor beds, and nothing has been done. So, in I go to make sure they are fit for OR tomorrow! I really don't mind going back and do things like this, because I know there is a tangible benefit to the patient in what I do. What I had trouble with as a medical student was the menial things that really make minimal impact in patient care. Not what people often classify as "scut", because if I understand the reason behind a task, and how it makes a difference in team function/patient care, I'm happy to do it -- but more like certain rules/regulations that must be completed as a care package/bundle. Those frustrated me to no end! Luckily, in anaesthesia, there is minimal amount of those. My desire for utility is often satisfied!

Halloweeeeeeeeeeeeen!

Boo!

Doing ATLS these past days. It's kind of fun to try out stuff that I wouldn't usually get to do, like put in chest tubes and do a pericardiocentesis! For this hat, I'm trying out a way to accommodate a longer pony tail through doing some pleats along the side. I think it mostly worked, but need to make sure they match up exactly for next time. I'm also debating about the dimensions of the top. It might be a little too wide from the front when I put it on. Some experimentation and tweaking to be had!

Losses

A new pack of watercolour-esque fat quarters

I'm really terrible at this whole "social" thing. One of the biggest challenges I faced in life is what to say to people who is going through a hard time. When other people say things to me, they make me feel better, but when I try to repeat similar things to others, it just sounds super awkward and weird. Maybe just to me? I really just have no idea what to do or say in a lot of emotionally charged situations, and it has been a point of frustration personally. It's not that I don't care, it's that I really can't figure out a way of expressing that I care.

This became a really challenging point when I found out one of my friend's relatives passed away. Being so far from this person, there wasn't anything I could do immediately to help, which is my default reaction. Trying to figure out if I should call or text became a very long and drawn out decision. The main dilemma was how comfortable I am to phone, and how likely I am going to say something super awkward and stupid... Adding to that was the recentness of the event, and the fact that I wasn't entirely close with the person affected. So, opted to text and send flowers and a card. Feeling pretty lame about it, and not sure if I could do it again I would call...

The EQ is not strong with this one.

Uniform

I'm such a dedicated employee =D This cap matches our scrubs!

There has been a lot of talk on patient satisfaction, and how to obtain it. Any more of this, and we might be heading in the direction of the Americans, where more emphasis is placed on making the patient happy than delivering good care. I'm happy for the recent improvements where there is more importance being placed on the patient experience. Patients are coming in at a very vulnerable time, and it is crucial to treat our patients with respect and dignity. The old adage of the crusty doctor telling patients exactly what to do and how to do it has pretty much fallen by the wayside. More and more we are trying to get the patient in the driver seat to direct the goals of their care. One of the reasons I enjoyed working with anaesthesiologists as a medical student was that they were always nice to their patients, and made an effort to put them at ease. Not only does patient-centred care empower patients, and give them some control in what often is a chaotic aspect of their lives, it also improves patient adherence to therapy, and leads to better outcomes. That being said, sometimes there is too much emphasis on making the patient happy that we are forgetting the point of health care provision -- caring for the patient's health.

Swimming, swimming, in the oceans blue

Pretty fishies!

It's different making scrub caps for others instead of for myself. I refuse to charge money for caps for people I work with, mainly because I don't want the obligation that comes with a business transaction -- deadlines, quality, perfect fit, etc... especially because they are my colleagues. If anything is unsatisfactory, I don't want it to even have the remote possibility of leaking into my professional/personal life. That being said, I still feel the obligation to make the work as good as possible. So I make sure my edges are clean, the stitches are tight, and the hat looks good over all. If I make more of these for other people, maybe I should start having a patch that I sew into the caps to sign them!

Procrastination I

Never too late to start preparing for Christmas!

Should be reading, should be reading, should be reading. I find that my motivation is down in the dumps!

Monkeying around & obesity

Went to Paint Nite today with some friends, and it turned out surprisingly well! That's not really what I wanted to talk about though.

I saw this article being shared through Facebook, and got very frustrated on two fronts. There is this terrible culture today where a person's self-esteem is attached to how much they weigh, which ties into the second problem that when I tell a person they are obese, it is not the same as telling them they have hypertension, because in the former, I'm making a judgement on their character, but the latter is informing them of a health condition. This needs to stop. We need to change the attitude people have towards obesity, separate it from being a judgement of the person, and focus on how we can manage the illness.

Ending the week on a high note!

A pretty cap to start the weekend!

An excellent day at work, which ended with me finding my stethoscope, and thus kicked off an excellent start for the weekend. Really, I don't appreciate how much I use the stethoscope everyday until I don't have it anymore. At the same time, I started to appreciate how little I actually would really needed it during a normal day when nothing goes wrong.
Working with an interested medical student is so nice. I remember being in their shoes, and just really wanted to be acknowledged and shown things. I tried to make my former self proud today, and I think I did an OK job. She seems to be having a good time, and definitely got exposed to stuff she hasn't seen before. I also gained an appreciation for how difficult it is to be an effective teacher. It's really hard to ask questions in a way to stimulate thinking, and not in such a way that just requires regurgitation of facts. Having a student also forces me to re-examine how well I know some of the basic topics, because in order to teach them, I have to know them really well off by heart first!

Bullshit policies

Felt the need to write about this.
In this hospital, parking garage access is through swiping the name badge at the gate. If you forget your badge, you have to take a ticket, and visit the parking office. That's what happened to me today. I was informed there that since I was already issued a voucher earlier this year, I can no longer receive a voucher to get out of the garage. So, I was left with either paying the extraordinarily high per diem parking fee, or somehow go home, get my badge, come back, and drive out. Keep in mind that I already pay a monthly parking fee for garage access. I was shocked by this policy, mainly because of how unaccommodating it is. Imaging you already are having a shitty day because you can't get anywhere you need to go after forgetting your badge, the hospital craps on you and holds your car hostage unless you give them an additional pound of flesh. All in the name of world class care, right? Meanwhile, other hospitals down the road actually have more than a robot in charge of parking, and understand sometimes people forget things and needs to be bailed out. Imagine that!

Hello World!

I'm partial to using Hello World as introductory entries. I always picture in my mind's eye a little alien stepping through the door to earth, and coming out onto the top of a high mountain looking down at all the nature and people on earth, and waving his little arms and saying "Hello world!"

Today is not a particular significant day as far as days go. It is not the first day of my residency, though that was not too long ago; it is not the first day I decided to start journalling regularly, that was several years ago; it is also not the first day I found my calling in life, that either has already happened, or has yet to happen. But, today is Labour Day where I am; it is also the only day off I get for this long weekend due to call.

So, without many reasons at all, I have decided to start a blog about residency, and scrub caps. I found that I'm getting better at making scrub caps! When I first started about a year and a half ago (was it really that long ago?!), I didn't have a sewing machine, so it was pretty tedious. I also had difficulty finding a good pattern for free online. The pattern I started out with wasn't the best for what I was looking for, but it did teach me about the basic components to a scrub cap. Before that point, I actually have never looked at how a scrub cap was put together, but was convinced that I wanted to make them since I'm hopefully going to be in the OR often in the near future. So, the first cap took about three hours (instructions here). The second one I kind of got around to try about 6 months ago (instructions here), but found that it didn't really accommodate my hair very well. So I was quite at a loss until about a couple of months ago, when I found this pattern. This was the closest to what I needed, and gave me a very good base and shapes to start from. I then looked at my friend's caps to see how they were put together, and made some modifications on the pattern I found. The end result was a way of assembling a scrub cap from a Fat Quarter and a solid coloured fabric for the top!

Like this

There was still some kinks to be worked out, such as the optimal position to place the elastic band so that it's useful to hold in hair, but not too tight. Of course, you could argue that the elastic band is useless, since there are ties at the back anyway. I would agree with you currently. However, I expect that as my hair grows longer, using the elastic and ties combines would give me more control over keeping all of my hair in the cap! We will see.
My favourite cap thus far comes from a yard of Marvel superheroes fabric I found the other day.

Why yes, I do have Thor on my head!

How long will I continue to write in this blog? I'm not sure. Probably as long and as often as I make scrub caps!

Now, for some post-call scrub caps:

The fabric is a lot softer than what I have been using. I like it a lot, though I worry about how well it'll handle being washed repeatedly

It's never too early to start preparing for Christmas! Luckily I made this one post day call instead of night call. Had to take it apart a couple of times, and really tried my patience. Lesson learned: always pay attention while pinning, and especially before sewing!