Frustrations

These are the things I found frustrating:

• Trying to get reflexes.  Nobody seems to understand what "relax" means.  I've tried shaking their leg, having many people standing there translating for me, hanging my stethescope and showing them I wanted their leg like that...I really can't seem to get people to relax their leg for a reflex.  The only time I got an accurate reflex was when the person's arm was paralyzed.  
• Trying to get basic things like a plate and a spoon.  I don't have a stove, so I've either had people cook for me, go cook with them, or buy off the street.  And today, the person who brought my food forgot to include a plate and spoon, and I was too lazy to go buy them in town so I ate off the lid with a knife.
• The useless library.  It's only open a few hours of the day, and the rest of the time, the class librarians are supposed to keep the key, but either the students don't know who's the librarian, the librarian's on vacation, or the librarian doesn't even know where the key is.  So when I ask nursing students to go look up something, most of the time, they really can't. :(
• Buying moldy bread: twice I've bought the bread, forgot to check it, and turns out it's kind of moldy.  Darn it!
• My leaky sink: Well, the faucet actually doesn't work, but the drain is leaky too and trickles on my feet, so instead of using the sink, I use another bucket and use that water for my toilet. I'm being eco-friendly!
• The mysterious megabyte drain: I'm pretty sure gchat itself only uses a few megabytes, but for some reason, sometimes many more megabytes would disappear and I have no idea what background programs are doing that. I want my megabytes back!!!
• People walking by me and saying "ching chung" or "he hong": I make it a point to ignore them.
• STUDENT NURSES!
• Don't give scheduled drugs because they forget or don't look at the progress notes or drugs are not in the patient's drug box.  But instead of telling the charge nurse, they just ignore it and sit in the middle table talking to each other. It's especially a problem when the dispensary is closed (after 2p and weekends), and they don't even try to get it from the emergency cupboard.  
• Forget about PRN drugs or don't put the time when it's given
• Leave without giving report to the next nurses
• When I say hourly vitals, they don't do it and just sleep.  Same with urine/stool output and po input recording - I ask for it to be done, I write it down to be done, I emphasize and say many times to have it done, and still no one does it.
• Don't give drugs for a whole day because the nurses forgot to give drugs from the ER box and it took forever to get the drugs from the dispensary.  The nurse who was supposed to get the drug from the dispensary was taking PICTURES of herself in her new uniform.  2.5 hrs later, still no drugs.
• They don't think or ask questions and are so used to just being told what to do or what to memorize.
• People don't care enough. :(
• When I say I need blood transfusion on a kid, they say they will do it tomorrow, but then come the next day, they say there's no money, and when they get money, they say there's no donor...there goes 2 days.
• There is so much chaos initially because nobody is assigned to any patient and they all try to work together on all the patients, so there's no sense of responsibility or patient ownership.  Everything is a little better now that a week has passed and I started to assign student nurses to patients.  
• The charge nurses are frustrating too - some complain of too much work and sometimes even stay at home or go off somewhere to buy fishballs and can't be found.  There are two who I really like though - Sister Francis and Mr. Niru - they are hard working and genuinely care about the kids instead of just exercising their power.
• For the longest time, I didn't even know who the maitron was (person who's head of the nurses/personnel of the hospital) because he's never there.
• There's a perfectly good ultrasound that can't be used because it's stored in a room that has no electricity and it's not allowed to be moved because it's said to be fragile.
• Holidays - there are too many holidays for no good reason and all it does is kill patients because outpatient, dispensary, and lab are all closed and not much can be done.
• Not being able to administer oxygen unless there's electricity - which is every other day from 7pm to 11pm - or OR is running (Tuesday and Thursday for a few hours).