Great Doctor Ling Ran
chapter-51

Chapter 51: Touchstone

*Hum…*

Huo Congjun stepped out from the door of the operating theater, humming as he made his way to the dressing room.

“Blue skies, clear water, green fields…”

As he sang, he peeped into the other operating theaters, like a rancher looking at his flocks of sheep.

The doctors in the Emergency Department knew that when Huo Congjun sang Tengri’s song, it meant that he was in a good mood. However, one would rarely hear him sing this particular song—Heaven.

“I love you, my home… My home, my paradise…” In Operating Theater 4, as Department Director Du listened to the climax of the song, he also sang it out gently, guiding the resident doctor under him.

“Push the patient down, the abscess is deeper. I will be doing a puncture biopsy to find out…”

The anesthetist, Su Jiafu, simply filled in a few medication data on the computer and saved it. He smiled and said, “Department Director Du, I will go to Theater 1.”

“Alright.” Department Director Du inserted a long needle into the patient with full concentration and did not even lift his head.

Su Jiafu chuckled, walked out of the operating theater, and thought, ‘The hospital should issue a compulsory psychological intervention for surgeons every six months.’

After he kicked open the door to Operating Theater 1, the imagined aggressive atmosphere did not appear.

Su Jiafu gently let out a breath. There was no quarreling in the operating theater. The anesthetists were all already overloaded with work, and they would pass out all of a sudden due to working too much and working too hard. It would be even harder on them if they were to be in a quarrel.

At the same time, Su Jiafu secretly praised Huo Congjun. He did not expect the infamous Rebuker to have done such an comparable ideological work [1].

He sat comfortably in his chair, turned on the computer, and began to write medication records.

“The suturing here is done. All that’s left is this one last thread here.” Ling Ran let go of his devices and yelled, “Wipe sweat”.

The nurse who had long waited for this moment immediately wiped the sweat from Ling Ran’s forehead with a clean white gauze. The serious look on her small face was something rarely seen on her.

Zhao Leyi’s face was green with envy as he took the opportunity to sneer, “When I was a resident doctor, I had to ask courteously when I wanted people to wipe my sweat.”

He was a quick-witted man. He had been working in the hospital for a long time, so it was only natural that he would not fume in silence like a child. Hence, he inconspicuously said something sharp to mock Ling Ran.

Not knowing how to be polite was how Zhao Leyi wanted to label Ling Ran.

Ling Ran did not say anything, but the nurse was not happy and said, “When you were a resident doctor, the Chinese economic reform had not happened yet. In our generation, you can speak however you like to. Doctor Ling, don’t learn all that fake politeness schtick from him.”

Zhao Leyi, who had been self-confident and strong, was startled. He swayed, then tried to argue, “I am only in my thirties this year. When the Chinese economic reform was announced, I was not even born yet.”

“Did the Chinese economic reform happen that early? I didn’t know.” The nurse pouted, turned away, and ignored him.

The nurses in the department were managed by the head nurse. In the hospital, the Nursing Department had its own structural organisation. Even if the doctor had become a chief physician, he could only give some comments and advice to the head nurse, but could not directly interfere with the work and management of the nurses.

Therefore, an attending physician like Zhao Leyi could tell a dirty jokes if he had too much free time in his hands. Similarly, nurses could choose not to care about him.

Zhao Leyi had no choice but to cough a few times. He lowered his head and resumed tending to his own part.

“Hemostatic forceps… Scissors…”

Only Ling Ran’s voice was heard in the room.

This time, Zhao Leyi was convinced that Ling Ran really needed to call out the devices. Otherwise, the scrub nurse, who had never been exposed to the M-Tang method before, would not know what to hand over.

Thinking of this, Zhao Leyi sighed to himself.

He knew why Huo Congjun valued Ling Ran. In fact, even though his heart was raging, if he were to be the department director, he would also value such a doctor.

In hospitals, the most valuable existences were doctors, and the least valuable existences… were also doctors.

There were nearly 150,000 clinical undergraduate graduates in the country each year. Approximately 20,000 were graduates of clinical master’s degrees, and they all want to enter the tertiary grade A hospitals, which the country had more than 1,300.

Each year, they only took in a few undergraduates not related to any other the higher-ups in the hospital. For the hospital, the interns came and went, just like fast-moving consumer goods. Resident doctors and even general attending physicians were not rare either. If one left, it was easy to hire another, and you could even earn some sympathy from people because you opened your doors to these people.

However, a doctor who could make quite a name for himself in a region, and was able to attain great achievements on a single disease was very welcome and popular in all hospitals.

To express it crudely in monetary terms, an intern’s subsidy was 600 RMB to 1,200 RMB a month, and resident doctors—before undergoing their housemanship—got about 2,000 RMB each month. After the housemanship, the resident doctors would only be paid a few thousand. For attending physicians, getting around 10,000 RMB was already considered a lot, unless they worked in lucrative departments that can make the surgeons rich overnight like the Orthopedics Department or the Ophthalmology Department, then perhaps they could hope to get 30,000 RMB.

In comparison, if a doctor who had already made a reputation for himself went to another hospital to perform an operation, that operation itself would cost more than 5,000 RMB, and that was calculated based on mates’ rates.

If the operating duration was longer, or the demand for the operation was larger, it was normal to ask for a price of 10,000 RMB or 20,000 RMB for immediate and urgent surgical operations which required the surgeon to travel. A slightly more competent doctor would even ask the local hospital to prepare two or three operations at a time, then finish them all at once to save time and energy from traveling.

As of the present, doctors could only switch to other hospitals to work based on their market value as well. If a surgeon was good at a certain skill and had performed 1,000 surgeries using that skill, then there were plenty of hospitals who were willing to pay the one million or two million RMB penalty for the surgeon’s breach of contract and get him to join their hospital. After all, every single surgery cost about 500 RMB to 1,000 RMB, and if a surgeon operated 1,000 cases, the cost of it would far surpass that one million or two million RMB penalty, which meant that paying the penalty was much cheaper than the hospital itself cultivating a skilled surgeon.

Because of this, for doctors such as the deputy director of the Department of Hand Surgery at Yun Hua Hospital, the contractual penalty generally rose to five million RMB. Even so, there would be various rumors about them leaving for another hospital every year, and after two or three years, the rumors would be found to be true.

By looking from this perspective, the medical field and professional sports possessed some similarities.

When interns and housemen were at the novice stage, their monthly income would just be enough to survive. Senior resident doctors and attending physicians were likened to entering the lowest level of the professional league. They must train as well as improve themselves, and simultaneously exhaust themselves on the field to only earn a meager living for their family in the end. It was only once they became chief physicians or associate chief physicians that the doctors may talk about status in the medical profession. But even then, they would still be in a somewhat sufficient but still lacking stage in their career. If the players left the former sports team, they might completely leave the circle of profession.

Only the doctors who made a name for themselves, and were at least the best in their industry, would have the flexibility of choice and a relatively generous income, and in response to that was a very high fee he had to pay if he chose to transfer hospitals…

Zhao Leyi bent his head down and looked at the numbed patient who was anesthetized, and thought that this guy would be the department director’s touchstone, and he reckoned that he would get the best treatment.

Once his hand functionality recovered to the expected rate of recovery, Huo Congjun could at least build another operating theater.

“It’s all done.” Ling Ran began to perform some examinations as he spoke.

At this time, the doctors who had returned to the operating theater one after another were also unable to suppress their curiosity and went to surround them.

Ling Ran was unbothered and went off his merry way to check the surface of the wound that he had sutured.

For Ling Ran, who would check if the windows were closed before leaving the house, it was all too natural to look and check more carefully before sending the patient out of the operating theater.

Zhao Leyi also pressed on with the operation work. To begin with, his work was quite simple; as long as the places where they should not be exposed were covered well with dressing, the organs that should not be spilling out of the body were sealed up properly in the body, and the places that should not be pressed together were separated, ensuring that the physiological indices were relatively stable, then they could send the patient out of the operating theater.

Finally, before Ling Ran left, Zhao Leyi put the forceps away and said, “I have finished my work here.”

“Great, you can rest now.” The nurse raised her fist in excitement and jumped off the step stool. As she looked up again, she found that her forehead was only up to Ling Ran’s shoulder. She blushed involuntarily and immediately started to giggle.

The nurse also incidentally glanced at Zhao Leyi who was still standing on the step stool.

Translator note:

[1] Ideological work: A common term to mean Chinese dialectical approach towards conflict management or contradictions (conflicts) among the people.