Week 13 : A walk to the workplace.

 

Let's talk about mundane walking to work that I did for the past these few days.No thanks to the motorcycle that didn't want to start. Walking out from the house, one could see foliage, left and right.

 Turning left at the end of the road, it's another 50 metres walk. Another 2 turns and 100 metres walk, I reached a pedestrian lane.

Nice tree, wasn't it?

 I walked onto another pedestratian lane. A long, 300 metres lane adjacent to the airstrip.

The Marudi Airport was right at the end of the pedestrian lane.

Crossing across the road at the airport, I would reach the hospital's carpark.

A 15-min walk to the hospital.

Week 12 : Gram staining

Day 1 : Receiving specimens at the bacteriology Section.

Samples include sputum, throat swab, blood culture, high vaginal swab, pus swab, stool, rectal swab, urine, ear swab, cord swab, urethral swab, eye swab and wound swab.

Upon entering patients' details into the record book, blood agar and macConkey agar were prepared.

Streaking on both agar was made.

Day 2. Plate checking. A single colony was taken for Gram staining.

Thin layer of cells from the single colony was made onto the slide and put on the staining station.

First, crystal violet solution was applied and stained for a minute.

Solution was discarded and rinsed thoroughly under running water.















Same procedure was repeated with Lugol's iodine, acetone and safranin O dye. Slides were dried with paper tower and checked under the microscope.

Numerous organism

Should a good single colony was taken, only one organism will be seen under the microscope.

Week 12 - Learning bacteriology continues

Attachment students inoculating bacteria into triple sugar iron agar

I am learning more than 20 organisms commonly found in the medical lab. Gram staining. Biochemical tests. Sensitivity and Resistance.

I am presenting CME today entitled " Reasons for Rejection of Samples in Hospital Marudi".

Early morning view of the landstrip

The borrowed motrocycle is breaking down again. And again. The battery was changed hardly 2 weeks ago. I had to walk back to my rented place again last night. I tried to start again this morning but it just hardly barged.

Week 11 : Monday

I really could not recall the last time I read anything on Microbiology or rather Bacteriology. Probably 15 years ago. Now, I had to checked all the microorganism again. Starting with Staphylococcus aureus. I didn't take a very nice Gram positive-stained picture last week.

I asked the attachment students to write up all the Gram positive and Gram negative organisms. And to draw their morphologies, They didn't do their homeworks. I gave them another day to make the chart.

Another meeting from the administrative staff tomorrow.

Week 10 - Wednesday

 

Blood procurement is a very tough job to do. Apart from many guidelines and procedures to understand, searching for a blood donor is very difficult. My staff told me before "It's far much easier to ask a person to give me a ten ringgit bill rather than a pint of blood."

I managed to liase with the police headquarter in Marudi to have a blood donation drive in their working community. After the day ended, we managed to collect 15 pints of blood, mainly blood group O+. It was a great sense of relief. We were so short of O+ blood group currently. Much paperwork needed to be done to make this drive a reality.

We currently only did a forward blood grouping. I am pursuing a reverse blood grouping too. As well as screening cells for GSH.My senior staff Rosidi assisted me much in explaining in detail the steps and reagents required for the bench work.

Big shots are coming to the Hospital again and we're told to dress up and act professionally.

Biochemistry results are in excellent region except magnesium with is much lower than expected.

I learnt Reticulocyte Count and spent much time researching on the issue. I even managed to give a hands-on workshop to my nine staff as to standardize the way of cell counting as the variations among the JTMP are too far apart.

I am still learning the art of interpreting the PBF. Anisocytosis. Anisopoikilocytosis. Nothing made sense to me at first but I am grasping the cells structure. Target cell. Cigar shaped cell. Lacrymocyte.