At dawn, Ye Sigong took care of his father together with a patient care assistant before he exited his father’s ward. He then started to make ward rounds.
Even though he was merely working in a county hospital, the beds in the wards were always full. Most of them were regular patients, but a small part of them were locals who were waiting to be transferred to the city to receive surgery. Overall, their conditions were not considered serious, and the treatments they needed were not complicated either.
Ye Sigong controlled his facial emotions well and tried to be careful in his speech. After he was done making ward rounds, he breathed a soft sigh of relief. As he sat in his office chair, he could not help but feel a little lost.
“Doctor Ye, I have a question. My father’s wound is still hurting, and there seems to be some pus…” After knocking on the door, a patient’s family member walked straight into the office.
“I was about to write a prescription and give him new medications. We’ll see what happens after that. All his other indices are normal…” Ye Sigong smiled, and with difficulty, managed to comfort the patient’s family member.
His department director had operated on the patient, but his department director was not that skillful. Aside from that, the patient was not in good health, to begin with, and because the nursing staff lacked skills, his surgical wound had yet to heal even after more than a week. Now that the patient’s family member was there to look for him, Ye Sigong had no choice but to come up with an explanation.
He neither had the power nor confidence to make any other decisions.
Truth be told, he was actually the department director’s student. But now that all of his department director’s students have left the county hospital and moved to larger hospitals, there was nothing honorable about him being the only department director’s student who was still here.
“Attending Physician Ye, are you done making ward rounds?” The nurse who had just walked into the office was about Ye Sigong’s age, but she came to the hospital eight years earlier than him. She smiled fondly at him and said, “You’ve prescribed omeprazole to a patient just now, haven’t you? We’ve run out of that.”
“Again? I’ll deal with it later.” Ye Sigong knew very well what was going on, but he did not feel like doing anything about it right now.
“Well, I’ve informed you about it, so the rest is up to you,” the nurse said and left.
“Alright.” It would not be appropriate for Ye Sigong to be too impolite. He raised his teacup and took a sip. The tea that he had just made felt bitter to the tongue.
“Doctor Ye.”
Another greeting rang out from the doorway, and Ye Sigong had no choice but to put down his teacup.
Ye Sigong turned and saw that it was the pharmaceutical sales representative from Duco Medical Company.
“Hey, Manager Fang,” Ye Sigong gave him an insincere greeting.
Since he was only working in the county hospital, Ye Sigong was not as arrogant as the doctors in tertiary Grade A hospitals. Of course, he still felt a psychological advantage over pharmaceutical sales representatives.
Old Fang smiled and said, “Doctor Ye, you mentioned that you desire to go for in-service training, right? I’ve made some inquiries on your behalf.”
“Yeah. Did you manage to get any leads?” Ye Sigong immediately perked up.
“The General Surgery Department of the First People’s Hospital of Yun Hua City. What do you think about this? The in-service training will go on for about three months, and you’ll be given incentives that are equivalent to the average salary of the doctors there. I don’t dare to make any other promises,” Old Fang explained things to Ye Sigong with a smile, but he was actually just putting up a front. The income of an in-service doctor and how he would be treated there depended on the department he went to, and that doctor would only find out about all these upon arrival. But there was always a baseline that these doctors could use as a reference.
Ye Sigong was a little tempted.
The passing down of skills in the county hospital he was working at was basically nonexistent now. This was because his department director was too old, and all his knowledge was outdated. Back in the days, he had learned how to perform open abdominal surgery from his department director, but because of limitations imposed by the hospital, the most they could do was cholecystectomy. The hospital used to carry out intestinal surgeries back when he was younger, but they had been doing less and less of that. Not only was that because fewer and fewer patients were willing to receive intestinal surgery there, but it was also because the department director himself was no longer so fond of doing it.
The advent and development of laparoscopy were supposed to be beneficial for county hospitals due to how easy postsurgical care was and how small the surgical wound was. It made things a lot less stressful for patients and doctors. Hence, the department director had arranged for two of his students to learn how to perform laparoscopy a long time ago.
However, due to the rapid development of laparoscopy, his students picked it up very quickly and were scouted by other hospitals a lot earlier than expected. They left way before they could teach the doctors who came after them how to perform laparoscopy.
This was especially true when it came to doctors who started working there in the nineties. For those whose hometown was not there, the first thing they chose to do after obtaining a skill was to jump ship.
It was much ado about nothing, and at the end of the day, the department was back to being an ordinary department in a county hospital again. Plus, they were basically as powerful and made as much money as a local bank.
Nevertheless, this did make getting a promotion easier for doctors who were around thirty years old like Ye Sigong. They basically just needed to become an attending physician to be able to get hired by other hospitals. It would be pretty enviable for them to be able to end up in a tertiary Grade A hospital.
However, things were not as easy for a doctor who wanted to strive for excellence and obtain new skills.
It was easy to stay here and learn how to perform open abdominal surgery from his department director. But not many patients were willing to receive open abdominal surgery for appendicitis and cholecystitis nowadays.
The department director actually did not bother to teach the doctors in his department anymore. What was the point in producing a few students who knew how to perform open abdominal surgery? Not only would they be reducing the number of surgeries he got to do, which were not many in the first place, but they might also jump ship.
Hence, when Ye Sigong and his other colleagues wanted to obtain new skills nowadays, they almost always had to go for in-service training in larger hospitals.
Truth be told, the First People’s Hospital of Yun Hua City was a pretty good choice.
Even though it was a smaller tertiary Grade A hospital, they had a steady stream of patients, which meant that the surgical volume would not be low. Aside from that, people might also be kinder in a tertiary Grade A hospital like the First People’s Hospital of Yun Hua City, and if he conducted himself well while he was there, he would definitely end up making some friends. If he were lucky, he might even get to know some chief physicians and associate chief physicians, and this would make life easier for him in the future.
As Ye Sigong thought about this, he looked at the pharmaceutical sales representative before him and said, “The First People’s Hospital of Yun Hua City is quite a good choice. By the way, we were talking about Yun Hua Hospital earlier. Are there no more slots there?”
“Yun Hua Hospital is very hard to enter right now.” Old Fang smiled. He was also having a headache about this.
It was not so easy to find suitable doctors either. He had asked Zuo Cidian about what the latter needed, which meant that Zuo Cidian was expecting a candidate. He could not just leave Zuo Cidian hanging after asking him about what he needed. If he did not give Zuo Cidian enough candidates or did not give him any candidates, the latter might also think that he did not care about the Ling Treatment Group enough and find him an eyesore. Of course, this was not a given, as he did not know what was on Zuo Cidian’s mind, and it was the standard example of “judge how he thinks of you by his heart, not by his actions.”
However, as a pharmaceutical sales representative, he could not afford to offend a doctor like Zuo Cidian.
Ye Sigong did not know what Old Fang was thinking about. He smiled and said, “Of course it’s hard to enter Yun Hua Hospital. But is there no chance for me to go there for two or three months at all? The Emergency Medical Center is definitely experiencing a huge lack of manpower right now, isn’t it?”
“You want to enter Doctor Ling’s treatment group, and Doctor Ling no longer performs many emergency surgeries nowadays. If you did not mind going to any treatment group as long as it’s in the Emergency Medical Center of Yun Hua Hospital, I would have been able to get you in.” Old Fang was only telling a half-truth.
Ye Sigong chuckled. “We can only go for in-service training for two or three months, and
I can’t just waste the entire duration in the Emergency Department. If I had more time, I don’t mind spending some energy and putting in some hard work there…”
“It’s actually good enough already. Two or three months, I mean.” Old Fang consoled the other party.
“Yeah, that’s the good thing about working in a small hospital.” Ye Sigong flashed a smile.
That was actually one of the benefits of working in a small hospital. They had the chance to go for in-service training every two or three years, and this was how their department director pacified them. If the department director refused to give any opportunities to the junior doctors, those junior doctors would feel like they have a bleak future and a boring life. They might even end up resigning and becoming a pharmaceutical sales representative.
For the past few years, Ye Sigong had not gone for any in-service training because of his father’s illness. Hence, he had quite a lot of choices right now.
Old Fang chuckled a few times and said, “Truth be told, if you were to ask me this half a year ago, I would have been able to get you into the Emergency Medical Center of Yun Hua Hospital. But things aren’t as easy right now.”
Even though this was an exaggeration, there was also some truth in it.
It was indeed easier to get a slot for in-service training in Yun Hua Hospital half a year ago.
Ye Sigong asked, “What new requirements do they have now? Are they qualification-related or age-related?”
Doctors from different hospitals had different preferences. Overall, no matter what high-ranking doctors preferred, no matter how absurd their preferences were, the pharmaceutical sales representatives would fulfill those doctors’ demands.
For example, certain high-ranking doctors like young men, so they would not take in doctors over a certain age. Certain doctors who had high qualifications themselves would only take in doctors from prestigious universities who had high qualifications. Not only did they like people of their own kind, but they could also show off their high qualifications at the same time.
There were also high-ranking doctors who disliked certain kinds of doctors. When it came to qualifications, there were doctors who disliked medical students who studied an eight-year course. There were also those who disliked doctors who took four years getting their bachelor’s degree and another four years getting their masters degree and PhD. There were also high-ranking doctors who disliked doctors who got a diploma before getting their degrees, and some who only looked at a doctor’s first degree when deciding on whether to take him in for in-service training.
However, doctors who were in a hospital for in-service training would leave after a few months anyway. Hence, most departments would not reject doctors who were willing to go over for in-service training, and the departments who set certain requirements were usually excellent and powerful departments.
This was because if departments that were weak were to take in a legion of excellent doctors, they would become a joke within the medical industry if their own doctors were to make rookie mistakes in surgery.
Old Fang had been in the industry for quite a while, and he knew what Ye Sigong’s question meant. He flashed an anguished smile.
“Do you have some inside scope?” Ye Sigong suddenly thought of something. “Don’t tell me that Doctor Ling has some sort of fetish?”
“No, no.” Old Fang did not dare gossip about such a thing. He quickly said, “You might not believe this, but the members of the Ling Treatment Group have not been eating well lately…”
Old Fang described the situation in detail.
He had no choice but to do it because if he were to skim on some of the points, he was worried that it would cause some strange rumors to arise.
Pharmaceutical sales representatives who intended to stay in the industry for the long run did not dare create such trouble.
Ye Sigong paid a lot of attention to what Old Fang was saying. After Old Fang finished speaking, he thought carefully about it and asked, “From what I can gather, what they need now is a doctor who knows how to cook?”
“Exactly.” Old Fang looked at Ye Sigong and asked a little probingly, “Could it be that you inherited some cooking skills from your family?”
“No. My father used to be a doctor. Everyone in my family is a doctor,” Ye Sigong said and paused for a moment. He continued, “But I usually cook for myself at home.”
“Are you good at it?”
“I’m pretty good at making shredded potatoes stir-fried with vinegar and pepper as well as curry chicken.”
“Oh…” The tiny flicker of hope in Old Fang’s heart extinguished.
He had already sent cooking videos of a few doctors to Zuo Cidian, and he had even let Zuo Cidian try some cookies and cakes made by those doctors. But it was obvious that Zuo Cidian’s requirements were very high when it came to the cooking skills of the doctor he wanted. And with the workload of doctors nowadays, it was very hard for ordinary doctors to be good at cooking.
In Old Fang’s opinion, only doctors who were born to a family of chefs and were already good at cooking before they even finished high school could fulfill Zuo Cidian’s requirement.
“You aren’t able to find any suitable candidate right now?” Ye Sigong thought about it for a moment and asked Old Fang.
“Of course not. Do such doctors even exist?” Old Fang said in exasperation, “Actually, cooking is just a small matter, don’t you think so? Those who go to larger hospitals for in-service training nowadays, especially those who end up in treatment groups of doctors like Doctor Ling can benefit a lot from it. Even if you were to disregard other things, Doctor Zuo made it very clear that he would bring the doctor they take in every time they go for freelance surgery. From what I know, every assistant in the Ling Treatment Group gets a fixed allowance of 2,000 RMB a day. Aside from this, they also get stuff like food allowance, and they can get a total of 5,000 RMB for two days of freelance surgeries. They’re able to get ten or twenty thousand RMB of allowance a month from freelance surgeries itself, and Yun Hua Hospital also gives out large sums of bonuses…”
Ye Sigong trembled a little.
Nowadays, attending physicians who worked in departments that reaped in high profits made around 30,000 RMB a month, and this was already considered a lot. Doctors working in the General Surgery Department were basically poop diggers, and the attending physicians there would not mind at all as long as they got to earn 20,000 RMB a month.
Ye Sigong did not even need 20,000 RMB. If he were able to earn 15,000 RMB a month, he would be able to cover his house loan and his father’s treatment fees. His life would really become an easy one then.
“Alright, I get what you mean. Let’s keep in touch.” Ye Sigong had come up with an idea, but he did not plan to let Old Fang know about it. He merely sent Old Fang off.
Old Fang assumed that this doctor from a county hospital was just being polite. He quickly thanked Ye Sigong before leaving the department.
Ye Sigong sat back down in his chair. He whipped out his phone and opened his contact list. He tapped on the name “Tai Fung Lau Peking Restaurant Chef.”
“Hello, Old Jiang.” The call went through.
“How long do you think I would need to quickly become a trained chef?
“That’s such a long time! Sigh. I don’t mind working more and resting less, you know?
“Ten hours is nothing. Back when I was in medical school, when exams were coming, I would only sleep for ten hours every two days. I did that every single year
“I’ll definitely be able to withstand it for half a month. I’m a surgeon, after all, and this is very common for us.
“No, I wouldn’t dare to. I’m not looking down on you. I’m just… This is what I’m thinking. I do know a thing or two about cooking. So I’m thinking about training for about twenty hours in your restaurant for about ten days to half a month. I just want to be able to make home-cooked food well. You know, those that are tasty and healthy at the same time. Do you think that it’s possible?
“I’m not afraid that it will be tiring! Just treat me as your servant. As long as you don’t hit my head, you can do anything you want to me.”
“Hey, what kind of life do you think that I live in the hospital?”
“Yes, that’s the way. Give me an hour. I’ll go and apply for leave before going over to the restaurant to look for you.”
