Ling Ran began to perform surgeries at three o’clock in the morning. After he operated until noon, he drank an Energy Serum to reenergize himself, and continued to perform surgeries until ten o’clock at night. Only then did he consider himself to have finished the day’s surgery.
As he watched the patient being pushed away, Ling Ran could not help but smile.
“Did you enjoy yourself?” Zuo Cidian could not even open his eyes. He had to drink two cans of Red Bull to stay awake.
Ling Ran nodded.
“Are you satisfied, content, and delighted?” Zuo Cidian asked again.
Ling Ran nodded.
“Are you feeling good?” Zuo Cidian asked one more time.
Ling Ran nodded.
Zuo Cidian was swaying, but even so, he did not forget to give Ling Ran a thumbs up. “Doctor Ling, your stamina is great. I didn’t even perform all the surgeries with you. If I had followed you through all of them, I would most likely be exhausted to death.”
“I’m dead tired, even though I’ve just helped him with half of them.” Lu Wenbin had long since sprawled himself on the ground.
“Snore…”
Su Jiafu, who performed all the surgeries with Ling Ran that day, said nothing. He sat silently on a small stool and fell asleep on the table. He started snoring.
Ling Ran was still energetic, handsome, and elegant as if he was the epitome of elegance itself. He was extremely graceful.
Zuo Cidian, who was over forty years old, spoke in an envious tone, even though he would never be able to gain Ling Ran’s stamina. “They say that youth is gold. My experiences as a young doctor were different from yours, but being young certainly has its advantages.”
“It’s absolutely useless.” Lu Wenbin moaned while he felt the soreness in his body. He said, “I’m still young, but look at me, I’m tired as heck.”
Zuo Cidian glanced at Lu Wenbin as if he was looking at a village farm dog.
“Schedule tomorrow’s surgery.” Ling Ran interrupted both of them and said, “Make special remarks on the patients who bring their own hospital beds.”
“There haven’t been many patients who have brought their own beds over the past few days, but I’m guessing that in the coming days, there’ll be more patients.” Zuo Cidian chuckled and said, “Treating the cadres is like digging out a rat’s lair. They come one after another. If you can handle them, they will come in groups.”
The circulating nurse who was drinking water spat out her water. “You sure know how to phrase your words.”
“Why wouldn’t I dare? I didn’t name anyone in particular. I’m just speaking in general,” Zuo Cidian said and smiled humbly toward Ling Ran. “Doctor Ling, you have exhausted yourself after working for the entire day, go back first. It’s fine to leave the rest to us.”
“Okay.” Ling Ran had no interest in cleaning up the mess. He turned around and said, “Tomorrow morning we can start working a little later than usual. Let’s start at eight o’clock and do some ward rounds before we perform surgery.”
Zuo Cidian forced himself to smile.
When Ling Ran left, Zuo Cidian looked at his watch. He whispered, “It’s less than twelve hours before I have to work again.”
“This is Doctor Ling’s normal schedule,” Lu Wenbin spoke in the tone of the eldest senior brother of a sect. There was even a hint of pride in his voice.
Zuo Cidian frowned slightly and said in a skilled manner, “We are only assistants, we can still distribute our tasks among ourselves. Doctor Ling is the chief surgeon. Can he work continuously like this?”
“As long as there are enough beds, he can.” Lu Wenbin glanced at Zuo Cidian and said, “You’ve opened Pandora’s box. If these old cadres can each bring their own bed, Doctor Ling will go crazy performing surgeries. ”
“Cadres, not old cadres,” Zuo Cidian corrected Lu Wenbin.
“Fine, cadres, then. But when you phrase it that way, does that mean that there were even more patients available?”
Zuo Cidian nodded solemnly.
“Even if there are a group of cadres, there wouldn’t be too many who have injured their meniscus.”
“Then you must be underestimating our cadres’ ability in spreading the word.”
“No way.” Lu Wenbin forced himself to chuckle.
Zuo Cidian nodded solemnly once again.
“Don’t be like Doctor Ling.” The young nurse next to him refused to work anymore.
Before Zuo Cidian could react, Lu Wenbin flung the door open and rushed out. “I’ll have to trouble all of you today, I have to go back and put away the stew.”
…..
The next day, at eight o’clock in the morning, Ling Ran began to do ward rounds with the members of his treatment group.
Lu Wenbin, Yu Yuan, and Zuo Cidian, who were in charge of the beds, briefed Ling Ran on the patients’ conditions while they walked. The three interns anxiously looked forward to the question-and-answer session.
Ling Ran rarely talked when they had to face most of the “old” patients. Yu Yuan was responsible for the consultation and other matters.
This modal had actually trained Yu Yuan’s ability to do ward rounds.
In fact, before an attending physician was promoted to an associate chief physician, their most important ability of all—doing ward rounds—was honed when their treatment groups did just that. Yu Yuan also had an advantage as the one with the highest seniority.
That would have been unimaginable in other treatment groups or other hospitals.
The power within a treatment group was extremely large. If measured by numbers, a decent treatment group in a tertiary Grade A hospital would receive more than 10,000,000 RMB in a year. Before the medical reformation, if calculations were made based on medication prices at that time, which was 15% more than current medication prices, even a hospital would be able to make a legitimate profit of more than 1,000,000 RMB from patients in one year.
A treatment group with such resources would have no problems in either nurturing the people in their group or poaching people.
Therefore, most of the treatment groups were led by the chief physicians or associate chief physicians, and they were assigned with many attending physicians as well.
The hospitals that could not nurture their doctors into attending physicians and form a sufficient number of attending physicians would still have enough motivation and necessity to poach other doctors from other hospitals.
However, in Ling Ran’s treatment group, Yu Yuan, who had just become a chief resident, was the doctor with the highest seniority. Her title as a chief resident was not a job title, but only a position.
It was a great opportunity for petite Yu Yuan to patrol the wards as a chief resident, even though that task was supposed to be reserved for attending physicians only.
Ling Ran enjoyed the free time he had that day. This was especially so after he was transferred to the VIP patient building. Ling Ran’s attitude had become even colder.
He did not like direct contact with patients, and those gentlemen who brought their own beds with them were even further away from being classified as adorable and likable.
In comparison, Yu Yuan’s ability to forge interpersonal relationships with such people was much stronger.
Regardless of whether it was men, women, the elderly, or the young, they would always be kinder toward small animals.
Ling Ran silently listened to Yu Yuan while she asked some questions. Unless there was a problem, he would just let Yu Yuan take control of the rhythm of the conversation. Otherwise, he would take the extra effort to correct her.
After he went through the entire VIP patient building, Ling Ran did not even receive a single Sincere Gratitude Treasure Chest from any patient.
Ling Ran was also indifferent about the fact.
He was not in a hurry for a treasure chest. Instead, surgeries were where his passion lay.
When it was nine o’clock in the morning, Ling Ran finally returned to his beloved operating theater.
The operating theater’s schedule for the day was also listed in the Operating Area’s waiting room.
“There are a total of eight operations.” Ling Ran’s tone could not be considered disappointed, but it was also not excited.
That surgical volume may have tired out other doctors and caused them die of fatigue. But for Ling Ran, it would need to depend on his condition before he decided whether he was so tired that he required an Energy Serum.
“One M-Tang surgery, two Achilles tendon repairs, five knee arthroscopy surgeries…” Lu Wenbin made some calculations, and he actually felt a little disappointed.
“We have no beds for our treatment group anymore. Today, four people brought their own beds. The remaining four people will need to use extra beds.” Yu Yuan delivered more bad news.
Zuo Cidian felt a little guilty. He said, “The news hasn’t made its way everywhere yet. I reckon that in a few days, the number of patients who bring their own beds will increase.”
“The problem now is not about patients bringing their own beds. We don’t even have enough beds of our own.”
“The extra beds are almost full.”
“If they need to be hospitalized over a long period of time, our bed turnover rate will definitely not increase.”
Everyone put their heads together, but they still could not think of a good solution.
Ling Ran changed into scrubs, put on a new pair of underwear, and listened to them as they talked. He then thought for a few seconds and said, “Our current solution would only be to reduce the patients’ recovery time.”
“We won’t be using the long-term hospitalization system anymore?” Zuo Cidian was the first to register his words. He did not quite understand the long-term or short-term hospitalization systems. He only knew that it was against the hospital’s policy. Therefore, when he heard that Ling Ran had changed his mind, he immediately brought it up.
Ling Ran shook his head. “We will adhere to the long-term hospitalization system, but we can consider reducing the time required for patients to recover while we operate on them.”
“While we operate on them?”
“We can reduce blood loss, reduce operating time, and perform simpler and more accurate surgeries…” Ling Ran mentioned three factors in one breath before he paused for a moment and continued, “If we can reduce the average hospitalization time by one day, we will be able to save a lot of beds with every one hundred patients.”
Zuo Cidian and the others were stunned as they listened.
“Doctor Ling, you always manage to think of new ways to deal with problems.” Zuo Cidian smiled on the outside, but he could not help but think, ‘Is this even a strategy? He’s just someone with a sugar and ice personality!’
