Short of Beds

I think the phenomenon of 'bed shortage' is only found in my hospital. Am on call today and after a gruelling double clinics day (geriatric in the morning and cardiac in the afternoon), I am actually not very surprised to know that we are short of beds for the night. Ho hum, same old story over and over again, especially on Mondays.

My hospital has a dubious distinction of being neither here nor there. On the one hand, we can't accept all patients for admission as being practised by the government hospital as "it would be shameful to ask patient to sleep on the floor or make-shift beds"; on the other, closing admission when the beds are all occipied, as practised by private hospitals and some semi-private ones, is unacceptable because "we can't simply turn away patients!". So it's a Catch 22 situation here. We are a 'semi-private' hospital, so we can 'behave' either way. Sigh.

So, here I am, with about 10 beds to last the entire night. Ten miserable beds can be filled within a very short time. Here we practise 'lodging' patients, meaning we try and find some empty beds in wards belonging to other disciplines and 'lodge' the patients there for the night. Unfortunately, as with most Mondays, the wards in all other disciplines are filled as well. That means no patients can be lodged anywhere tonight. We are so, so stuck.....oh dear.

We are going to need a miracle to survive the night! I better get down on my knees and pray now....