Path of Medicine With a System

Zhang Fan finished his temporary rotation in the general surgery department. Although he had been able to perform some surgeries, the number wasn’t anywhere close to meeting Zhang Fan’s requirements. He truly regretted that he hadn’t returned home, thinking that he could grind more surgeries instead. He wasn’t able to grind like he wanted, and missed out on seeing his family.

Zhang Fan was transferred to the cardiovascular department of internal medicine. He had originally wanted to go to another surgical department, but the hospital’s administrative department arranged for him to go to internal medicine, so he couldn’t do anything about it. He felt that it would be meaningless for him to talk to Superintendent Ouyang for something so small.

Ouyang Hong definitely wouldn’t mention Zhang Fan to the administrative department for being a special exception. Her position as superintendent would be quite worthless if she did.

The internal medicine departments were all in a completely different building from the surgical departments. The cardiovascular department had two floors, and was the largest internal medicine department. Ouyang Hong was also originally from the cardiovascular department. The cardiovascular department was also in charge of interventional radiology, so it had an extremely high number of patients.

In northwestern China, people ate foods with higher fat content than average. Thus, there were more people than average with high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and so on. The cardiovascular department also had more than 20 doctors—well above the average for a department. The current director of the cardiovascular department was Ouyang Hong’s disciple.

That director was Ren Li, a woman in her forties. She was the only doctorate degree graduate student in all of Chasu City Hospital. It was said that she’d previously worked for a major hospital in the provincial hospital. However, the nepotism there was really severe, and she wasn’t favored, so she didn’t enjoy working there. Ouyang Hong had ended up headhunting Ren Li to Chasu City Hospital.

Ren Li was a highly skilled doctor. She was also beautiful. The only issue was that she was slightly lacking in emotional intelligence. She didn’t know how to say pretty words, for instance. Still, the cardiovascular department developed at a really fast rate after she became the department director once Ouyang Hong was promoted.

The cardiovascular department sent more doctors than any other department out to study and learn. The new technologies and theories here were more cutting-edge than any other internal medicine department. The lower-ranking doctors all really respected Director Ren. She wasn’t the dictator type, and her skills truly spoke for herself. Her personal income was all because of her medical skills. She was one of the fairer department directors.

The cardiovascular department was one of the most powerful departments in Chasu City Hospital now. This was because Superintendent Ouyang Hong greatly supported her former department and the disciple who became department director. Back when the surgeon Huang Yun was the superintendent, all the internal medicine departments barely received any development at all.

Previously, Ouyang Hong had constantly debated former Superintendent Huang Yun for the sake of obtaining more resources for internal medicine. The successful establishment of the interventional radiology center under the cardiovascular department had been due to Ouyang Hong’s efforts.

Back at the time, Chasu City had given Chasu City Hospital a grant. Huang Yun wanted to use this money to establish an orthopedic disease research center. Ouyang Hong strongly opposed this, recommending the establishment of an interventional radiology center instead.

Huang Yun and Ouyang Hong even filed lawsuits against each other, overseen by the Chasu City Communist Party Committee. After half a year of legal debating, Ouyang Hong finally won in the end. The grant money was used to create an interventional radiology center under the cardiovascular department. However, Huang Yun had always resented her for this. Although the interventional radiology center was established successfully, while he was the superintendent, he never assigned it sufficient resources or personnel.

Ouyang Hong was quite stubborn and forceful. She singlehandedly developed Ren Li, the cardiovascular department, and the interventional radiology center even without any support from the superintendent. The interventional radiology center successfully increased the cardiovascular department’s overall income by a tremendous amount with Ouyang Hong’s development. Many young doctors were thus highly interested in joining the cardiovascular department.

Ren Li established a recruitment exam that all doctors would have to take if they wanted to enter the cardiovascular department. If you failed the exam, you wouldn’t be accepted into the department no matter what. Nobody could do anything about this, because she had the new Superintendent Ouyang’s support. In a workplace like a hospital, medical skills reigned supreme. No excuses could be found if the boss said that your medical skills were insufficient. Even connections wouldn’t help.

Zhang Fan felt quite uncomfortable in the cardiovascular department. Back in the surgical departments, the patients would be varied and of all ages. However, the cardiovascular department had almost exclusively elderly patients. They typically relied on walking staffs and wheelchairs, or supported each other while walking unsteadily. Just watching them made Zhang Fan feel like they were in danger.

The surgical departments and the internal medicine departments of Chasu City Hospital were almost completely separate. Although they were all part of the same hospital, apart from occasional consultation, the departments rarely interacted with each other. Zhang Fan spent every day in the surgical departments’ operating rooms, so he didn’t know any of the internal medicine doctors.

Zhang Fan’s reputation was quite incredible by now in the surgical departments. However, almost nobody in internal medicine knew about his surgical accomplishments. Here, he was nothing more than a new low-ranking doctor—just another resident doctor. He no longer had the special privileges he’d had back in the surgical departments. Naturally, this also meant that nobody here respected him.

Internal medicine courses were still unavailable to Zhang Fan in his System, so he could only study and learn by himself. Two female doctors had also been rotated to the cardiovascular department together with him. One just finished a rotation in pediatrics, while the other had just finished a rotation in gynecology. Both of them had already been chosen to join internal medicine after the rotations.

Zhang Fan was assigned to a female doctor named Ye Jing. She was an attending physician in her mid-thirties. Ye Jing was an ordinary doctor with no special standing in the cardiovascular department.

There could only be so many elites in any department. Anyone who didn’t compete or work hard wouldn’t have a chance.

Ye Jing’s husband was a government official with a very good salary. Thus, Ye Jing was completely unmotivated in her work. She felt that it was simply a job, and focused mainly on her family. She believed that it was more important for her to take good care of her child and support her husband at home.

Well, there was no helping it. This would be the common way of thinking for ordinary people. However, in a workplace like a hospital, where skills were the most important, you would be relegated to unimportance if you didn’t work hard. Director Ren already knew that Zhang Fan was a doctor who would be chosen by a surgical department, and that he wouldn’t be able to contribute much to internal medicine. That was why she assigned Zhang Fan to Ye Jing.

On the very first day that Zhang Fan joined the cardiovascular department, Superintendent Ouyang came over to have a detailed checkup on the entire department. Many doctors, nurses, rotation doctors, intern doctors, and administrative department employees all participated, with almost 50 people involved.

Even with this, many nurses didn’t follow this big group around. This was because they had a large amount of patients’ liquids to analyze. They were unable to take any time off from this work.

Checking up on all the patients in internal medicine was quite different from surgery. In the surgical departments, everything was quite clear. It would be obvious what type of surgery a patient required, and if it was unknown what problem a patient had, then the doctors would perform open surgery to determine the problem. At most, the discussions would be about who would be the primary surgeon for a surgery, and what surgical techniques to use.

But in internal medicine, things such as the body functions and systems, the degree of illness, the type of medicine to be used, the brand of the medicine, the prescription’s amount and duration, whether the patient had any medical allergies, and so on would all need to be discussed.

Ouyang Hong was the hardworking type who believed that she should continue to learn even though she was now the superintendent. As she checked on all the patients, she constantly asked the attending physicians, rotated doctors, and intern doctors various questions. The doctor in charge of each patient also had to report each patient’s medical situation, treatment plan, and how appropriate the treatment plan was. They would all need to debate such things with the superintendent.

If Ouyang Hong deemed a treatment plan to be inappropriate, the doctor would then need to immediately draw up a new treatment plan right there on the spot. The entire morning wasn’t even enough time for the superintendent to finish her overall department checkup.

Of course, she wasn’t the type to leave things half-finished. She continued the department checkup even past noon. The doctors who were in poorer physical condition couldn’t even handle this, as it was difficult already for them to stand for so long, not to mention perhaps having to change the medical advice and treatment plan for a patient.

It wasn’t much of a problem for Zhang Fan to stand all day. However, some of the other new doctors and intern doctors were having a hard time because they had never met with such a high-standard work inspection from any boss before. Some of them would secretly stand by the wall to support their backs. They were still holding on to medical reports in their arms. Although the medical reports were simply some pieces of paper in a plastic binder, each binder typically had more than 10 medical reports, which would still be quite heavy when carrying the binder for a while.

Ouyang Hong’s questions for the doctors were quite professional and detailed. It was quite common that the lower-ranking doctors were rendered speechless, unable to answer her questions. She was the strict type who required the higher-ranking doctors to be able to answer her questions immediately. If the higher-ranking doctors were also unable to answer, she would immediately give them demerits, not caring one bit about their face.

All of the doctors were incredibly tense as Ouyang Hong continued her checkup of the department. They felt truly bad about being scolded by her right in front of the patients.

Ouyang Hong didn’t ask Zhang Fan any questions today for her department checkup. She knew that Zhang Fan was already chosen by the surgical departments, and that it was highly unlikely that he could answer any questions about internal medicine. She didn’t know what Zhang Fan’s relationship with Li Xiao was, so she gave face to Li Xiao, and didn’t make things difficult for Zhang Fan.

Ouyang Hong was a short old lady. However, since she was the superintendent, she gave everyone else an extreme amount of pressure because she was the highest-ranking boss of the hospital. Plus, she was extremely strict, even to the point where some of the rotation doctors were trembling in fear as they stood nearby. That was how powerful her aura was.

After the major department checkup, many medical reports would have to be written. All the attending physicians and low-ranking doctors carried notebooks with them. They had to immediately record any medical advice that the higher-ranking doctors told them was better for the patients’ treatments.

This would then have to be reflected in the doctors’ diagnoses. The requirements for internal medicine’s diagnoses were far higher than those for the surgical departments. For example, if the orthopedic department received a car accident victim with a bone fracture, the diagnosis would be quite simple. The doctor would only have to record which bone was fractured, the time, location, people involved, and degree of injury.

That would be no good for internal medicine. The diagnosis would have to start from when the illness started. Then there would be if the patient had received any treatment so far, what type of treatment, how were the effects, had the illness worsened or improved after the treatment, what type of medicine the patient was taking, did the patient remember to take the medicine on time, and so on.

Internal medicine also had much stricter requirements for professional vocabulary and tone. For example, phrases like “can be used”, “may be used”, “good”, and so on all had specific places where they could and couldn’t be used. If a doctor misused any of these words or phrases, Ouyang Hong would scold them to death.

Internal medicine’s medications were also far more varied. There was far less medication to worry about in surgery. Surgery only had antibiotics, blood coagulants, and blood circulation medicine. At most, perhaps surgery would also require proteins, blood infusion, and so on. What medication a surgery patient needed was usually quite clear.

Things were different in internal medicine. There would be tremendous differences between medicine of the same type. Some people could use certain types of medicine, while others couldn’t.

Having a good rough understanding of internal medicine was quite simple. It would be enough for a resident doctor to learn enough general knowledge after only spending three months in an internal medicine department. However, truly mastering internal medicine knowledge would be quite difficult. You would need an excellent foundation in the basics, from how the various body functions and systems worked to the different types of illnesses and being able to memorize everything from histology to biochemistry and applying such knowledge to daily medical use.

Only a beginner doctor would still need to consult medical textbooks for help regarding a patient. A skilled internal medicine doctor would understand the overall situation of your body just from seeing your complexion due to having seen so many previous examples.

It would be impossible to reach that level of skill as an internal medicine doctor without well over a decade of solid studying and experience.