JCIA Week

Everyone has been scuffling around for the past few weeks (or months) in preparation for this week: the JCIA Week. JCIA means Joint Commission International Accreditation. Our hospital, St. Luke's Medical Center in Quezon City, has been accredited three times already and we are gearing up this year for re-accreditation. Now that the hustle and bustle of the past few weeks has finally arrived, everyone - from the CEOs down to the janitors - are all uptight. I don't even know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. Suffice it to say that all the negative things/places/events/people that there is in St. Luke's have been stashed away and/or remodeled to look like that thing/place/event/person never existed. 

Example #1: We have our canteen here called Pronto. Admittedly, our canteen is not at par with the hospital's slogan "One of the world's best" because it actually looks drab and smells stuffy. The food is not that great either. Despite its substandard appearance, everyone would flock to the place because of the cheap food prices (and prolly because there is no other canteen inside the hospital hehehe). Come four days prior to JCIA Week, we were shocked to see the door of our beloved canteen shackled in chains, dark, desolate, and empty. I talked to one of the vendors in our canteen and she told me that they were closed for the JCIA Week and that the following day, they were told that the canteen will be closed indefinitely due to some reconstruction. That's a good thing, I guess, considering that the canteen has been ignored for so long by the big bosses of our institution. 

Example #2: We have this new vision of our hospital: to be the best academic medical institution by the year 2020. For the past few years, the clerks and interns are shied away from the lime light come JCIA time. The residents would recall on how they, as clerks at the time, locked themselves inside the callroom come JCIA time so that the foreigners would not see them roaming around lest they be questioned and they provide inappropriate answers. But since we now have a new vision, the clerks and interns are supposed to be part of the survey. However, I still see a lot of clerkies and interns flocking around the callroom or going to the library because they were told to do so. Some clerks were told to go to the ER only after 1700H because by then the JCIA Committee will not be around to ask questions. I just don't get the fact that they still want us there but we do not get to do the usual things that we do. It's as if we are still in hiding because of the way they treat us. I am not mad. I am just curious as to how the big bosses think. 'Tis all.

Example #3: Now that JCIA has arrived, there are a lot of papers to be filled in. Where were these cholecystectomy pathways before? 

No offense meant here. I mean, I love SLMC. But it's just disheartening to know that people would only want to change their milieu if and when other people start poking around and questioning them. I guess that's just the nature of things. You get to be so familiar and comfortable with what you have that you tend to forget that there are some chinks and clutters that need to be cleaned and organized. Oh well. I could rant on and on but I'd rather not. After all, I love my school. I love my hospital, chinks and clutter and all. I'd rather focus on the positive and thank the JCIA Committee for coming here and giving the big bosses a chance to re-think and re-organize the entire SLMC system. I sure hope the SLMC community would get to continue the positive things that this JCIA brought to our hospital. Regardless of the whole thing sounding and looking so fake in the eyes of a medical clerk.