Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Ling Ran spent his time at home guiding Doctor Miao as well as suturing a few patients himself, and the days passed by just like that.
Lower Groove Clinic had quite a good supply of patients. Nowadays, there would be a few patients looking to receive cosmetic suture and a couple dozens of patients looking to receive fluid transfusion every day.
If a clinic had more than a hundred patients who were there to receive fluid transfusion or buy medication within a day, it would pretty much make quite a sizable revenue. With the addition of cosmetic suturing, they were making a lot of profit each day.
Hence, the Ling family had the urge to renovate the clinic.
Ling Ran had passed those few days at home guiding Doctor Miao, but there was only a limited number of patients looking to receive cosmetic sutures each day. So, Ling Ran once again put out a sign to seek for clients who wanted a massage. Even though the sign read [35 RMB for two minutes of massage] instead of [25 RMB for two minutes of massage] this time, very few of the neighbors complained about it.
By then, everyone in the neighborhood already knew how skilled Ling Ran was when it came to massage manipulation. The ones who were willing to pay were scrambling for a slot, but those who were not willing to pay were jealous of how much money the Ling family was making.
For the next few days, Ling Ran did not use an alarm clock to wake up, and he would even go back to sleep after he rose in the morning. After that, he would dawdle to the hospital. And most of the time, he would return home once he was done making ward rounds.
Hepatectomy was major surgery, and patients would need to stay in the ICU for several days. Those whose conditions were serious would need to stay there for a week or two. There were even cases where patients who received hepatectomies had to stay in the ICU for around twenty days.
The hospital’s ICU had a limited number of hospital beds, and once they were all filled up, it took a long time for the space to be freed up again.
Besides, surgeries were also being carried out in other departments, and some of their patients would need to be sent to the ICU too. Those departments sent patients to the ICU regularly, hence the ICU did not dare allow Ling Ran to use up all the hospital beds.
No matter how handsome he was, he was still required to obey the basic rules of the hospital.
Most importantly, Ling Ran’s assistants were also feeling drained.
They had to assist in surgeries and read up on hepatectomy as well as perform routine tasks such as making ward rounds. They were also forced to write a lot of medical records because the number of patients Ling Ran was able to operate on within a day way surpassed that of other doctors. The doctors in the Ling Treatment Group even had to carry out freelance surgeries along with Ling Ran during the weekends. They had totally reached their limits.
“We’re not performing any hepatectomies this week.” Ling Ran decided to slow down when he saw all the unfinished work on the task board.
He just received a new skill, Arthroscopic Reconstruction of the Cruciate Ligament. In addition, he had yet to complete the self-improvement mission for Cholecystectomy. Hence, he planned to adjust his schedule a little.
He wanted to read a few books on the field of orthopedics at least.
When Zuo Cidian who was sitting in front of his desk and writing medical records heard that, his voice trembled as he asked, “Doctor Ling, if we’re not going to perform hepatectomies, what do you plan on doing?”
“You guys can voice out if there’s any patient whom you want to treat, or else, we can just let the hospital beds stay empty for a few days.” Truth be told, there were not many empty hospital beds anyway. Ling Treatment Group had always believed in letting patients stay in the hospital for a longer time after their surgeries. Hence, they were always running out of hospital beds. They only had a few empty hospital beds right now because a few patients had been discharged during the past two or three days.
“Are we… taking a break?” Zuo Cidian was so happy that he almost screamed in excitement.
Lu Wenbin and Yu Yuan, who had just processed what was happening, widened their eyes. They found it a little unbelievable.
“Are we really going to stop taking in patients?” Lu Wenbin asked in astonishment.
“Yeah, we’re not taking in any patients for now. Let’s rest for a few days.”
“I’ll give Department Director Huo a call.” After Zuo Cidian came back to his senses, he immediately called Huo Congjun to halt the patient supply.
Ling Treatment Group operated in a relatively special manner. Since they were part of the Emergency Department, they did not offer consultations. Therefore, if they did not take the initiative to look for patients, not many patients would seek them out.
Even if there were any, they could just transfer the patients who required emergency treatment to other departments and schedule to see the rest of them at a later date. That was normal practice.
“Guys, take these few days to complete the backlog of medical records.” Zuo Cidian did not dare to let the members of the treatment group rest completely. In fact, it did not even cross his mind.
They had to finish all the medical records, as they would get into a lot of trouble if they failed to do so.
Ling Ran was not interested in writing medical records. A medical record consisted of almost ten thousand words, and the person writing it just needed to copy and paste information from previous medical records, then change the figures. It did not fit Ling Ran’s aesthetics at all.
“I’ll go make my ward rounds. Yu Yuan, come with me. We could stand to make some improvements when it comes to infection control.” Ling Ran rose and left without giving the other doctors any chance to speak.
If doctors had a choice, none of them would want to care about infection control at all.
All doctors found themselves very clean. Even if a doctor did not shower for three days, he would still believe that he had no body odor whatsoever.
Very few doctors were willing to wash their hands with alcohol-based hand sanitizer before examining every single patient.
While all doctors did not mind washing their hands before operating on patients, they did not care much about their hygiene when they were in the wards.
Above all, it was very troublesome to carry out infection control because the ones doing it would get into conflict with other doctors. Besides, the nurses and the head nurse often refused to cooperate.
In short, it took a lot of effort to execute infection control policies, and the results were often invisible.
However, Ling Ran never cared about being insulted or offending those around him.
If Ling Ran were to get affected every time someone was dissatisfied with him, he would have panicked the moment he received the hundredth love letter in his life.
Hence, even though Yu Yuan and the other doctors in his treatment group were not willing to put in effort when it came to infection control, Ling Ran still insisted on it.
Infection control was the right thing to do, and it was also necessary.
Besides, it did not take a person much effort to carry a bottle of alcohol-based hand sanitizer around.
“We need to get the water drainage pipes cleaned too. Other than that, we need to increase the frequency at which the bathrooms of all the wards are cleaned. This is because the frequency at which they clean the bathrooms depends on the number of hospital beds. So, now that we always have additional hospital beds, the bathrooms need to be cleaned more often,” Ling Ran ordered as he sauntered around the ward, and Yu Yuan took notes.
“Are we going to hire extra manpower to do that? The nurses wouldn’t be willing to clean the bathrooms so often,” Yu Yuan said in the hushed tone.
“Hire extra manpower and also make some of the medical interns do it,” Ling Ran said.
Yu Yuan raised her head to look at Ling Ran who used to be a medical intern and continued in a soft voice, “It’ll take quite a lot of money to hire extra manpower. We’ll need to inform Department Director Huo.”
“I’ll give him a call later.” Huo Congjun had given Ling Ran permission to use a certain sum of the department’s funds.
Truth be told, some of the treatment groups led by experienced doctors were totally financially independent.
Of course, treatment groups with weak leaders received no funding at all, and the doctors of those treatment groups had to watch every single word they said to their department directors.
“Buy more alcohol-based hand sanitizers as well.” Ling Ran had used up a bottle of alcohol-based hand sanitizer by the time he completed a ward round. He took another bottle of alcohol-based hand sanitizer, which was lavender-flavored, and said, “I’ll head to the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery. Go ahead and contact the outsourcing companies.”
“I thought you weren’t planning to carry out any hepatectomies these few days?” Yu Yuan trembled a little at the thought of hepatectomy.
“I’ll see if I can get a chance to perform a cholecystectomy,” Ling Ran said. “Zhang Anmin promised me that I’d get to act as chief surgeon.”
“All right.” As Yu Yuan stared after Ling Ran, she heaved an internal sigh of relief.
Unlike Achilles tendon repair surgeries, hepatectomies put a lot more pressure on the first assistants and even the second assistants. In the Ling Treatment Group, only Lu Wenbin and Ma Yanlin were able to better adapt to it. Even so, things only got relatively less stressful after Zhang Anmin came over to help out.
Yu Yuan and Zuo Cidian were not as skilled as their other team members when it came to surgery. All resident doctors were able to carry out simple tasks such as retracting the skin during an Achilles tendon repair surgery. However, Yu Yuan felt extremely diffident and stressed out every time she had to assist in a hepatectomy.
“If only performing surgeries were as easy as writing a research paper.” Yu Yuan only felt a little better when she thought of research papers, and she started to think about all the papers as well as books she had read. Shortly after, Yu Yuan thought about her collection, and she immediately flashed a big smile.
Ling Ran walked at a relaxed pace to the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery’s ward area.
Recently, half of the patients in the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery’s wards had been Ling Ran’s patients, and he frequently made ward rounds there.
All the doctors and nurses there obediently greeted him.
While Ling Ran used to be able to roam freely in the operating theaters, ever since Professor Feng Zhixiang left, he was able to do as he pleased in the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery.
Neither He Yuanzheng nor his subordinates wanted a day where there was a possibility that a doctor like Ling Ran would make them a negative example and criticize them in some future international conference. They did not want Ling Ran to do that in a national conference, an out-of-hospital consultation, or an inpatient consultation either.
“Where’s Zhang Anmin?” Ling Ran simply walked over to a doctor who was wearing a large white coat and asked.
He kind of felt like carrying out a cholecystectomy.
“He’s in the ICU,” the doctor answered carefully.
The Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery’s ICU used to be a ward for senior officials. Despite being a little shabbier than the ICU in the VIP patient building, it was the first choice of patients in the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, especially those who had received major surgeries. The reason was that the patients there were taken care of by hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery specialists as well as experienced nurses.
Ling Ran thanked the doctor and went to look for Zhang Anmin.
Before he could reach the ICU, he noticed a bunch of people crowding up the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery’s tiny lobby. There were even people pacing along the corridor.
Ling Ran furrowed his eyebrows and yelled, “Excuse me!”
The people in the tiny lobby made way for him, and Ling Ran crossed the lobby.
The room that was connected to the tiny lobby was also full of people.
“Teacher Zhu, don’t worry too much. It’s just cholecystitis, and a lot of people have suffered from it before. You’ll get discharged within a few days.”
“Teacher Zhu, you’ve been working too hard. You care so much about your students that you didn’t even head to the hospital even though you were feeling unwell.”
“Teacher Zhu, even though you have a lot of students, you should still take care of your health.”
The people around the hospital had big smiles on their faces as they spoke to the patient who was lying on the bed.
The patient was almost in tears. He tried to force a smile but failed. His expression was extremely dark.
“Sigh, don’t be like that. I get what you guys are trying to say. Could I possibly be suffering from… cancer?” Teacher Zhu’s face fell as he said the word “cancer”.
The people crowding around the bed quickly said, “No, it’s really not…”
“I know that you guys are lying to me…”
“No one’s lying to you.”
“Principal Liu, I’ve been working in the school for thirty years. And when I was admitted to the hospital for a month two years ago, you guys merely brought me a basket of fruits. But now…” Teacher Zhu’s eyes were brimming with tears as he looked at the bouquets of flowers and fruit baskets around him.
Principal Liu flashed an awkward smile and looked around for help.
The homeroom teacher licked his lips and drew himself closer to Teacher Zhu. He whispered into Teacher Zhu’s ear, “Old Zhu, your son is getting transferred to the Department of Education.”
Old Zhu froze for a moment, and his eyes slowly brightened.
“I’m only suffering from cholecystitis?” Teacher Zhu asked.
When Zhang Anmin saw that the patient had calmed down, he answered, “Yes, cholecystitis. Even though there’s adhesion, it’s not very serious. We suggest that you get it resected. If you’re okay with it, we’ll arrange for you to go under the knife as soon as possible.”
“Yeah… Do get it resected.” As Teacher Zhu spoke, he could not help but flash a smile.
