One of the disadvantages of living in a building without a doorman is that you never know for certain whether you’ll receive any packages in the mail. Given that I am not home during daylight hours on every weekday, I can never be present to sign for a UPS/FedEx package.

I ordered an important textbook last week, and apparently the UPS carrier attempted to deliver it twice without success. The first time, he left a note on my apartment door stating that he will reattempt delivery tomorrow. I left a note on my door asking him to leave it with my neighbor or at my doorstep. The second day, he left a note OUTSIDE my building stating that he will reattempt one more time. Dammit.

I called UPS that evening to hold my package for pickup, but never received a callback. I called the central office, and they told me that the UPS center in my area (Bronx) doesn’t have working phones, but I could go by within the next 15 minutes to pick it up. Given that a direct cab ride to the service center would take at least 20 minutes, I told them to reattempt deliver to ANYONE in my building the next and final time.

Later that evening (9:30pm), I heard my doorbell ring. My hopes rose as I thought that the UPS carrier had doubled back on his delivery route.

Two teenage guys dressed in starched shirts and black pants and tie greeted me at my door. One was carrying a thick, leather-bound book with gold embellishments on the edges of the pages.

“Ni hao!” one of them exclaimed.

They must have understood my disgust through my body language, and handed me a card with an address to their establishment in town.

If the UPS man were only so fortuitous in his deliveries…

misc humor, rant

The community of patients that our ophthalmology clinic serves is notorious for providing bogus contact information. This includes phone numbers, addresses, and sometimes even ages. This is likely not intentional–they travel back and forth from their home country frequently. Many of them do not have a permanent U.S. address and provide a relative’s, friend’s, or neighbor’s when asked. This is problematic when we have to contact them.

For missed clinic appointments that is usually not a problem. They can reschedule at their own leisure, and there are usually enough patients to be seen in clinic already. Our surgical numbers, however, are dependent on our ability to reach our patients.

I had 2 patients that I’ve been trying to schedule for pterygium surgery, and none of their provided telephone numbers work. How can I reach them? I have a listed address on the demographic sheet, but should I go to their house to ask them to return to clinic for surgery?

Imagine that your doctor shows up at your doorstep to get you to have surgery. How would that feel? I wonder if he’d be treated like any other annoying traveling salesman hocking his wares.

I guess I’ll find out soon enough…

medicine ophthalmology, rant

Some IT departments are simply bad. I have been struggling over the last few weeks to obtain login access to the computer I use in the clinic. Without access, I’m unable to view any of my patients’ medical records.

I called the helpline responsible for the computing systems (5-HELP). After several prompts and minutes of waiting, I explained to the support staff my problem. He replied, “Oh, that’s a hospital computer, you need to call 4-HELP.”

I subsequently dialed 4-HELP, and waited through a suspiciously similar system prompts. The support staff on 4-HELP explained to me that even though the computers in question were in the hospital, they were controlled by the university. Hence, I would need to dial 5-HELP for support.

I explained to him that I had already done that, and he retorted, “You’ll have to speak to you departmental administrator.” I asked my program director’s secretary what I needed to do, and she told me that she had done “everything possible to activate my accounts” (translate: I’ve done nothing). I would have to dial 5-HELP for help.

Painful.

computing, medicine computing

Those who have completed their ophthalmology residencies can vouch that it wasn’t easy. There is variability in the efficiency in which a resident clinic operates, but most of them are busy. You have an excessive number of scheduled patients along with walk-ins that consume your day. In addition, there are insurance and scheduling issues to consider. If you are in a small program, your call schedule will be packed.

My medicine counterparts whine to me how dermatology and ophthalmology consults are so lazy because our consult notes until the next day. Most of the time we do our non-emergent consults in the evenings. During the day we have clinic patients to see. The program I am in has a resident rotation dedicated to consults, but it is intermingled with surgical time. We run between clinic patients to see our inpatients, and many of our evenings and weekends are filled with lectures or clinic.

The most difficult adjustment that I’ve encountered in my two weeks of residency is that I am a PGY-2 with intern knowledge. Our medical education is geared toward training us to be internists, not surgeons or subspecialists. We have to relearn a dedicated physical exam for the eye. Right from the beginning, we are (in theory), the experts in our field.

Hopefully, it will be easier as the year progresses…

medicine ophthalmology

The other day my laptop got “wormed” while I took down my firewall to do some software patches. I had forgotten to disconnect from the Internet, and after 30 mins of patching, my computer started acting weird. Before I knew it, a gazillion pop-up windows materialized on my desktop, and the computer became non-responsive, even after reboots. This is the one of the worst things that can happen to a computer literate user. I got hacked. This is what I get for not upgrading my copy of IE 6.0.

Sadly enough, the mirrored drive on my hard drive was not accessible (boot sector was hijacked), and I did not have a second computer to link up my laptop drive to recover some files. I spent the next 3 hours installing a non-IBM version of Windows XP and hunting Thinkpad drivers online. In the process of fiddling around, I discovered that my USB ports were blown–typical USB header on the laptop gets pushed back into the motherboard after long-term use. One of the capacitors were oozing as well.

Hardware and software failure almost inevitably means a new computer. What will my next computer be? Will it be a Mac? In the meantime, my computer is still functional, albeit in a limited form.

computing computing, rant