Yuan put on her facemask, and proceeded to carry out her shift. She walked over to the medicine room; two nurses were in there preparing all the medicines into jars for intravenous use. Everything in the ward is essentially put into these bottles; the needles are like long-term loans. They are essentially given to the patients, and they keep them for the entire time they are there in the hospital. Yuan brings out the medicine for the rooms she’s covering today on a cart, with a bottle in a basket that can be hung above the patient, with a medical prescription from the doctors of what drug and what dosage. Yuan matches the slip to each bed, and asks the patients or relative to say their name so that she can double confirm the prescription. Yuan doesn’t want to be in the same situation that one of her colleagues, Xiaofeng, had to deal with. One time, Xiaofeng, in a lapse of either laziness or carelessness, forgot to double confirm the medicine, and after the medicine was administered, she realized it was for the wrong person. A male relative, who had stepped outside to pick up breakfast and a smoke, saw the mistake and immediately started yelling and cursing at Xiaofeng. In a panic, Xiaofeng ran out of the room, with the man chasing her trying to swing his newspaper at her. Lin had to step in and doctors came in to restrain the man. Even after restrained, the man was arguing with all the doctors and nurses around him, threatening Xiaofeng. Xiaofeng went home that day, and didn’t come back to work for over 2 weeks; the trauma of both the verbal and physical abuse changed Xiaofeng completely. She became really quiet and reclusive, a photographic negative to the bubbly girl Yuan once knew.
Yuan did not want any of that; she’s heard of Lin talking about how nurses in the United States are treated with more respect, and they don’t need to look over as many patients. America, it sounds like an unattainable dream. Yuan shrugs the thought off and pushes the cart down to the next bed.
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