Everyone was quite satisfied with the barbecue. Wang Dashan had prepared a foam box for Liu Banxia, filled with grilled meat skewers.
They weren’t fully cooked, so they could be heated in the microwave and eaten directly. Otherwise, if they were fully cooked, they would become very dry and lose their good taste.
"Well, I thought you guys were never coming back," Wei Yuan sighed when they returned.
"Give them a little reward. We had a barbecue. If you’re not too busy, heat up the skewers for a late-night snack for everyone," Liu Banxia said.
"We’re not busy, just some debridement work, and not too many patients," Wei Yuan responded. "The nights have been manageable recently; I hope it stays this way. Good heavens, you brought back so many! How are we going to eat them all? Aren’t you being a bit too generous? Did you just keep cramming them in?"
Seeing the meat skewers revealed when the foam box was opened, Wei Yuan was genuinely taken aback.
"Teacher Wei, this is after Teacher Liu stopped him; otherwise, there would have been even more. Wang Mingxing’s father was incredibly enthusiastic towards Teacher Liu," Xu Yino explained.
"Alright then, we won’t stand on ceremony with our esteemed Teacher Liu," Wei Yuan chuckled.
Everyone was in high spirits and felt no burden at all accepting a treat from Liu Banxia.
"How did the trip go? Were you able to pick out some good prospects for us?" Wei Yuan asked while eating a meat skewer.
"Personally, I feel the results were quite good. But how many genuinely skilled individuals we can actually recruit remains to be seen," Liu Banxia replied. "Moreover, the difficulty of this work is truly immense right now. We need to select people worth cultivating seriously and also meet the teaching and training quotas for interns. So it’s quite a headache."
"Haven’t you noticed I’ve been participating in fewer emergency tasks lately, mostly just doing routine surgeries? I’ve actually been pondering this matter; it’s genuinely distracting."
"A generic training plan definitely won’t cut it because the director needs to ensure everyone who comes for training genuinely masters something. This means it has to be tailored down to the individual."
"That’s for sure. The ’mass lecture’ approach definitely won’t work anymore. But every year, between interns, hospital staff, and external personnel undergoing standardized residency training, that’s a huge number of people," Wei Yuan noted. "This matter will probably consume a lot of your energy, and you’ll need to maintain constant contact with various departments, right? But if you inquire too much, you might face some dissatisfaction."
"You need to think about this carefully yourself; others can’t share this burden for you. All we can say is that for the personnel interning and undergoing standardized residency training in our emergency center, we don’t have any problems."
Liu Banxia nodded. This was indeed the pain point and the most difficult part to coordinate in the entire teaching and training program.
In the teaching and training process, there are exit exams for rotations, annual exams, and graduation exams. Interns also have their own departmental evaluations. But relatively speaking, how effective are these assessments? Can they truly reflect a trainee’s abilities?
That definitely warrants a big question mark.
People have varying capabilities, just as fingers have different lengths—long ones differ from each other, and short ones differ too. So, the quantification of assessment criteria should, as much as possible, adopt a standard that isn’t excessively high.
If you set it too high, perhaps very few people could pass. If you set it too low, it would waste many people’s learning time, and for these individuals, it wouldn’t achieve an effective training outcome.
What if you make the teaching and training plan too detailed? For some departments, their daily workload is already immense. If you make things overly meticulous, would you even let them carry out their normal patient consultations and nursing work?
Liu Banxia wasn’t a heartless person. He could choose not to care too much about some things, but when it came to his work, he had to be serious.
"Teacher Liu, thank you," a passing nurse, carrying heated meat skewers, greeted with a smile.
"Eat the skewers, but don’t let your work fall behind," Liu Banxia said.
"Don’t worry, Sister Li is keeping an eye on us. We wouldn’t dare slack off," the nurse replied with a laugh.
At this moment, Xu Hui also came over, holding meat skewers. "President Liu, you should really contribute a couple more microwaves or something."
It was a rare moment of rest. Nighttime wasn’t like daytime; there weren’t as many patients, and it was quite late, so it was fine for everyone to relax a bit.
"Do you have any thoughts on the future teaching and training work?" Liu Banxia asked.
"Don’t ask me. You figure it out yourself; I’m not getting involved," Xu Hui said with a laugh. "Still trying to set me up? If I fall into your trap, I’ll be stuck. This isn’t an easy job, so you’d better use that brain of yours."
"Sigh... It’s precisely because the teaching and training work is so difficult that I’m worried sick right now," Liu Banxia sighed. "If it really comes down to it, I’ll have to find time to call a small meeting with you all. Then you’ll have to contribute ideas and suggestions; otherwise, this hurdle will be too difficult for me to overcome."
"It’s hard to manage no matter what, mainly because there are too many people. And the director’s intention is to raise the minimum passing threshold by a significant margin. This is another manifestation of standardization; how could it be easy?" Wei Yuan said. "In our emergency center, it’s still manageable. We see each other all the time, you frequently ’bribe’ us, so we work hard, practically doing free labor for you."
"But what about the inpatient department? The number of patients there hasn’t decreased just because our emergency center has more patients. Currently, many patients in our emergency center are actually overflow from the inpatient department; just look at the utilization rate of our operating rooms to understand."
"The difficulty coefficient of this matter is not just ordinarily high; you need to think it through carefully. If the standards are truly set particularly high, it will not only provoke resentment from interns and residents undergoing training but, more crucially, might affect the morale of the departmental supervising doctors."
"Exactly! That’s what I was worried about. So you guys noticed this long ago? Why didn’t you give me a heads-up sooner?" Liu Banxia said helplessly.
"That would be no fun. It’s most interesting when you discover it yourself," Xu Hui said irresponsibly. "Pressure creates motivation. Anyway, your brain works well. Try to find a balance point, and all problems will be solved. Just don’t take too big a step at once, and don’t treat all interns as if they are like Xu Yino’s batch."
Liu Banxia nodded. "I’ve also researched some materials, and combining that with what I learned during my standardized residency, there is indeed some room for improvement. But there’s also a point of conflict here, for example, the matter of getting hands-on surgical experience. This requires supervising doctors to spend more time, and that’s a difficult issue to resolve."
"That’s a given. Supervising doctors have responsibilities they have to follow; it’s not that easy. You’re energetic and can do the work of several people, but others can’t," Wei Yuan said. "Especially under such high-standard requirements, how many interns can one person supervise at a time? And with so many interns, how much hands-on work can be allocated?"
"For example, in our hospital, regarding the number of surgeries performed, who can currently meet your level? Only by doing more surgeries can interns be given more practical opportunities."
"This is the only reminder I can give you: when considering this problem, try to formulate the training plan according to the standards of others as much as possible."
Liu Banxia nodded; he had indeed considered this issue.
Xu Yino and his group grew so quickly. Although they truly endured a lot of hardship, they also had the *opportunity* to endure that hardship. Other interns might only be tired from long working hours, but Xu Yino’s group was tired from practical application. He himself had only experienced a marathon of surgeries like that once; it really wasn’t easy to encounter such a situation again.
Additionally, the number of patients visiting the emergency center was now quite large, and the operating rooms were also relatively busy. Under this major premise, it was inevitably necessary to centralize surgeries and then decentralize them. Centralization referred to each doctor’s surgical day schedule, while decentralization meant trying to avoid having the operating rooms under controlled time for too long. They also had to coordinate with the anesthesiology department’s work schedule; they couldn’t be allowed to work round the clock continuously either.
There were truly too many aspects that needed to be reconciled. If even one aspect wasn’t coordinated well, problems would arise in the future.
The teaching and training work didn’t just involve these interns and the resident doctors needing standardized training; it was also related to the operation of the entire emergency center and the Second Hospital.
Anyway, the more he thought about it now, the bigger his headache became. Initially, he was full of confidence, thinking that as long as he was serious and responsible, there would be no problem. He felt that his past self was just a naive kid. If it were really that simple, would they need a deputy director to specifically oversee this matter?
Seeing Liu Banxia’s worried and bitter expression greatly amused Wei Yuan and Xu Hui. However, on this matter, the two of them really couldn’t offer much help. This matter involved too many things and required comprehensive consideration. At most, they could share some of their own feelings. How to actually get a grip on the teaching and training work was a very big test.
Liu Banxia was also completely helpless against these two who were teasing him while munching on the meat skewers he had provided.
Actually, they had said quite a lot, and it was because of their good relationship. Otherwise, if they had just fed him some high-sounding, empty words to fool him, he would still have had to thank them for the deception.
"Doctor, doctor, come quickly and look at my daughter! She’s having some trouble breathing; she can’t catch her breath!"
The doors to the emergency center opened, and a man holding a girl in her early teens rushed in, his face fraught with anxiety.
"Put her on the examination bed first and connect the monitor," Liu Banxia said quickly, but his eyes noticed the girl’s abdomen was somewhat swollen.
This made his heart lurch.
Wei Yuan and Xu Hui, who had also noticed this, quickly gathered around.