Ji Tianlu came to the office with dark circles under his eyes.
His daily workload was already very heavy. It was even harder as paying attention to the expansion of the ward was added into his workload.
However, Ji Tianlu was still extremely high-spirited. The expanded ward was indeed temporarily filled by Ling Ran, but everyone could use it. Even if the Ministry of Health could not temporarily increase the number of approved hospital beds in the center, if they really wanted to do something about it, they would not have a problem to have one patient per room.
In fact, Ji Tianlu could almost imagine that when the rooms of the Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center turned into single-bedded rooms, patients would come in abundance. If a person had the financial capability, that person would not be willing to squeeze in a room with others.
During the establishment of the country, multiple families could be found living in a tenement yard. Later, as long as it was possible, even if they had to use up all their money, they would want to live separately.
The same was true for hospitals. Huashan Hospital, which was affiliated with Fudan University, had VIP rooms that 1,200 RMB a day, and the patients had to pay out of their own pockets. They also had rooms that cost 2,000 RMB for medically-insured patients. Even if they were pricey, there were still plenty of people who went to those rooms, and those places always bustled with activity.
Huashan Hospital could pull it off, but the Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center… naturally could not.
It was not easy to raise the prices for their services in public general hospitals without the approval of the Ministry of Health. They could only wait for a reformation to do so.
Ji Tianlu let out a long sigh, picked up the landline, and dialed the nursing department and asked, “How many people are discharged today? How many empty beds do we have?”
“Seven have been discharged from the hospital. They just did the paperwork this afternoon.” The sound of busy footsteps could be heard running around at the other end of the phone.
“Huh? Just seven? Didn’t a dozen people leave the hospital a few days ago?”
“Count the time. There are a number of patients who have replanted their fingers over here. The time is too short for them to have been discharged. There are none who are in the condition to be discharged.” The nursing department paused and said, “There are no empty beds. You guys better come up with a solution. Don’t send in more patients.”
Ji Tianlu was momentarily stunned. “Is there not even one hospital bed? How about we add a few more…”
Adding extra hospital beds was actually just putting a bed in an empty space.
Correspondingly, if they wanted to add hospital beds they must get approval from the head nurse. Otherwise, there would be no sense to have a patient occupying a hospital bed if there was no nurse to do the aftercare.
“Do you want to exhaust us to death? You have to have an attending nurse if you wanted to add more hospital beds, you know? We only have a total of a hundred over nurses, how are you going to add extra hospital beds?” The head nurse roared in anger, “I’m telling you, it’s nice to occasionally earn some overtime pay, but if you have the guts to make it a normal thing, I will make you see something drastic. You better slow down your speed of occupying the hospital beds.”
“Erm…” Ji Tianlu felt as if he had been treated unjustly and said, “These are all Ling Ran’s patients. There’s no point in shouting at me.”
“Ling Ran is a new doctor. He would only do some ward rounds, he wouldn’t know how busy it would be to nurse a patient. He is young and handsome. I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t know. How many years have you been a doctor? Don’t you know the situation in the ward?” The head nurse continued. “I have to recruit twenty contract nurses again. Otherwise, your new ward will need to be closed.”
Ji Tianlu listened until he felt the veins on his forehead pop. “You used to say that I am still very handsome during my middle ages and said that my arms were long…”
As a doctor with a thin body, long slender fingers, paid attention to his appearance and tried to emulate the doctors in Japanese dramas, Ji Tianlu had never been at a disadvantage in terms of looks.
The voice of the head nurse softened, just as expected. “You are good-looking too when you are young, but you shouldn’t compare yourself to someone else. Enough, go off and tell Ling Ran about this.”
“No, why should I be the one to tell Ling Ran? Go and tell him yourself.” Ji Tianlu still refused to admit defeat, but after recalling Ling Ran’s face, Ji Tianlu also felt embarrassed to ignore the facts.
The head nurse chuckled, “Are you telling me you don’t want me to lead the team anymore? If I go and look for Ling Ran now, the group of girls born in the nineties will go on a strike, and you’d better believe it. Also, you do know that the current batch of internship nurses are all born after the millennium, right?”
Ji Tianlu only felt that the amount of information was too big to deal with. “Those who are born after the millennium have started to become nurses?”
“The internship nurses now are working 24/6 shifts. I’m telling you, those who are born after the millennium are already serving in the army and protecting the country. What do you old men know? Quickly go and tell Ling Ran, I can still hold the fort now. If I say anything wrong, the interns will resign in minutes, and you’d better believe it!”
“Hey, when did I become an old man…”
“Quick!”
“Alright, alright, alright…” Ji Tianlu could hear that the head nurse was really anxious.
After staying in the hospital for a long time, the doctors knew that nursing was not easy. Not only was the workload extremely heavy, but the nurses’ responsibility was also very great.
Compared to the young doctors in the hospital, the chances of nurses getting blamed for mistakes were not low. The greater the workload, the greater the percentage of error, and adding too many extra hospital beds were truly not plausible.
Ji Tianlu laughed bitterly and had no other choice but to look for Ling Ran.
He would naturally be located… at the operating theater.
Meanwhile, a system notification appeared in front of Ling Ran.
[Mission Completed: Rise into Prominence]
[Mission Details: Made full use of the beds of Shanghai’s Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center. They have all been filled.]
[Reward: Intermediate Treasure Chest]
When Ling Ran realized what happened, he looked up just to see Ji Tianlu enter the operating theater after opening the door.
“The hospital’s hospital beds have been used up.” Ji Tianlu did not waste time with small talk. He went straight to the point.
He did want to be a chief physician who could “produce” hospital beds, but this work was harder than what Ji Tianlu had imagined.
Although the ward had been expanded, he was not able to freely increase the number of nurses in the hospital, even with a contract system in place. Moreover, to suddenly have four to five hundred hospital beds in a short period of time was one thing, maintaining the hospital beds over a long period of time was another matter.
In terms of the domestic standards of using their workforce to the absolute limit, they would need at least four hundred nurses to be able to bring to fruition the idea of taking care of five hundred hospital beds for twenty-four hours. Otherwise, forget about primary and secondary nursing care, even the task of changing infusion bags could not be completed.
Besides, they also had to increase the number of care workers. This additional cost alone made adding beds to no longer be an issue that could be decided by Ji Tianlu, a chief physician.
Of course, if it were to be Zhu Tongyi, the situation would be completely different.
If Zhu Tongyi had the need for it, he could increase the staff quota. It was easier for him to increase the number of contracted nursing staff. No matter what, he could easily fill up an accounting book with the cost that would come if he wanted to implement the changes.
The difficulties in reality momentarily made Ji Tianlu admit defeat. He then looked at Ling Ran and said, “You have to find ways to reduce incoming patients.”
“What about patients who come to our door?” Ling Ran did not immediately open the treasure chest but continued to concentrate on performing the surgery.
His surgery speed was very fast, but if he stopped and ended up holding up his work, the surgery which was supposed to be short would end up being delayed, and the prognosis would be affected.
Ji Tianlu thought about this problem earlier on. He sighed and said, “We can still vacate a few hospital beds every day. However, if it’s not a particularly urgent operation, I suggest you transfer the patient to other hospitals.”
The Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center could not afford to have five hundred beds. During the early stages, everyone was in a state of excitement, and they only lasted by draining all their stamina.
Things like having extra hospital beds had always been things that just made their burden too heavy to bear.
The Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center was also helpless if they had to endure the stress of having extra hospital beds for an extended period of time.
Therefore, when the nursing department could not increase the number of nurses and everyone did not want to earn overtime pay, the hospital beds must be greatly reduced, they had to reuse the expanded ward, and they had to maintain more than two hundred hospital beds. It would then be easier for them because they only had to take care of single-bedded rooms and multiple double-bedded rooms, but any more than that, and it would be too difficult for them to manage things.
“Transfer to other hospitals?” Ling Ran tilted his head with an obviously reluctant look.
Ji Tianlu said earnestly and kindly, “Don’t be unhappy, there are never-ending surgeries to be done.”
“Okay,” Ling Ran replied. He lowered his head and continued operating.
“You’re still not happy, aren’t you?” Ji Tianlu was nervous.
“No,” Ling Ran answered.
“You’re really not happy, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Sigh, listen to me. You know how the saying goes, ‘If the old ones don’t go, the new ones won’t come.’ Now, the new rooms have just been built, and after a while, when everything begins running smoothly, we can add more patients.”
“Okay.”
“Are you angry?” Ji Tianlu could not help but approach Ling Ran. He wanted to continue advising Ling Ran.
*Thump, thump.*
*Thump, thump, thump.*
*Swish.*
Someone opened the door of the operating theater from outside.
Huo Congjun had his arms behind his back. He looked at Ji Tianlu with a profound gaze and walked over step by step.
Yu Yuan staggered behind him like a smug fox.
“Department Director… Huo, why are you here again?” Ji Tianlu looked at Old Huo’s face and asked in resignation, “What about that… annual meeting for the challenges in pelvic anatomy…”
“Annual meeting for the challenges in pelvic anatomy and gynecology?”
“Yes, that meeting should have ended already right?”
“There’s a new meeting.” Department Director Huo stared at Ji Tianlu’s shoulder. Yu Yuan stepped forward and firmly squeezed into the gap between Ling Ran and Ji Tianlu. She separated the two of them.
Ji Tianlu found it weird and hilarious, “What meeting is it this time?”
“Sports Injuries and Arthroscopies Forum,” answered Department Director Huo.
Ji Tianlu’s expression changed. “Isn’t that the meeting in Qingdao?”
“Yes, I came to Shanghai for a transit.”
“You went to the wrong place, didn’t you?”
“Did not.” Huo Congjun looked up as he spoke and said to Ling Ran, “If you find a patient who comes to you, you can transfer them to Yun Hua Hospital for medical treatment. Our department’s Emergency Medical Care is full of hope, there will definitely be enough hospital beds when the time comes.”
“Okay,” Ling Ran answered obediently.
