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44 H o b b i t The Hobbit’s Nonsensical Glossary of Healthcare Sector Terms Let’s face it: healthcare is a confusing business. overcrowded, A neophyte can be totally lost when confronted after setting with the many different personalities, fiefdoms recent record and inconsistencies in healthcare. Fear not, highs in The Hobbit will now give you an overview with incidence rate in this completely irreverent, satirical and plain 2003 and 2004. nonsensical glossary of terms one is likely to encounter in the healthcare realm. As usual, folks Director of Medical Services A senior position who can’t take humor, please venture no further in the Ministry of Health empowered with sticks beyond this paragraph. to strike fear. Conveniently reserved for a very senior Medical Service Officer. (c.f. “Permanent Aesthetic Medicine The attractive branch of Secretary”) general practice that general practitioners are not in competition with the polyclinics. For now, Electronic Medical Records Exchange that is. A programme that is in urgent need of examining and debating its implications Alexandra Hospital A place where medical on implied consent, as well as patient students were supposed to go to so that they can privacy and confidentiality. study patients with malnutrition. Now rebranded as our local Hanging Garden of Babylon. Family Medicine Register A register to distinguish poorly paid general practitioners from better qualified – but equally poorly paid – general Buangkok Green Medical Park An unnecessarily practitioners. long and humourous euphemism for Woodbridge Hospital, the hospital that every Singaporean Graduate Medical School An issue that is likely to knows what it is for. suffer a host versus graft rejection reaction, if it is not carefully dealt with now. Changi General Hospital A hospital that claims to treat patients like the staff’s own mothers. Some Health Promotion Board An organisation that say it’s more like mothers-in-law. makes you believe that if you lead a healthy lifestyle, you stand a good chance of finally College of Family Physicians Singapore An dropping dead suddenly without pain, suffering organisation that The Hobbit is not allowed to and big hospital bills. comment on in SMA News, lest he suffers the wrath of Sauron, the vengeance of Saruman and Institute of Mental Health See entry under the curse of Smeagol. “Buangkok Green Medical Park”. Clusters Organisational constructs similar in Johns Hopkins Singapore An institution located concept to the human appendix. They’re there but in National University Hospital that was originally no one is really sure why they’re there. Likewise conceived to provide quaternary care in oncology prone to bouts of inflammation but unlike the and other disciplines. Now being relocated to Tan appendix, has been somehow able to avoid Tock Seng Hospital. Enough said. resection so far. KK Hospital A friendly place for women, children Dengue A disease that was suddenly discovered to and debt collectors. be endemic in Singapore at about the same time that Tan Tock Seng Hospital was discovered to be MBBS An acronym for “Mouth Big, Brain Small”. Page 45 S M A N e w s October 2005 Vol 37 (10) 45 Page 44 – The Hobbit’s Nonsensical Glossary of Healthcare Sector Terms Radiology A local branch of medical specialty Minister for Health The person who decides soon to be rendered obsolescent by Indian on the rules about sticks and carrots, and who radiologists, and maybe even local cardiologists. gets what. In current context, also synonyms for “infallible” and “Teflon”. Salma Khalik Name of senior healthcare reporter who was influential enough to Means Test Like elves provoke a medical profession-wide and hobbits, a mythical clarification from the Director of construct that is often Medical Services (DMS) when heard but never seen. she could not communicate his vision accurately. “The article National Kidney did not communicate my Foundation An vision accurately and in the organisation that used to right context.” have much in common (DMS, The Straits Times with kidneys in the Forum, 7 January 2005.) following ways: a) Has much “reserve” Singapore General Hospital capacity. The hospital that handles the b) Is well-protected by hard most difficult cases and copes with structures and well-padded with fat. more than half of the nation’s immune- c) Has other functions besides its main compromised patients. Once labelled maliciously charter, like oncology and children’s as “a headless chicken” by an ungentlemanly health (just as the kidneys maintain competitor. Also a VRE-friendly place. haemoglobin and blood pressure besides producing piss). Singapore Medical Council (SMC) The d) Its operations run in a countercurrent organisation that enshrines the grand principles direction (to what it’s supposed to do). of democracy and self-determination in the e) Is able to reabsorb most of what was filtered medical profession by compelling all doctors out. to vote for a maximum of 8 out of 17 SMC f) Is susceptible to autoimmune diseases, positions. thereby self-destructing in the process. g) Like the retroperitoneal kidneys, relatively Southern Half of Singapore The area where inaccessible to normal surgical intervention someone decided ALL of our acute general without causing extensive damage to hospitals should be located, notwithstanding surrounding tissues. that new towns containing hundreds of h) Is simply full of excreta. thousands of people have been coming up in the Northern part of Singapore in the last ten to Night Polyclinics Something that SMA was twenty years. right about in 2001, and was finally proven right in 2005. Specialist Training Committee The local mafia that determines the lives of helpless and young National Neuroscience Institute An doctors-in-training. organisation that went for an appendix transplant recently. (See entry under Tan Tock Seng Hospital The most “happening” “Clusters”.) hospital in Singapore where everything exciting begins, from SARS, dengue and chicken pox, Permanent Secretary A senior position in the to patient-indemnity forms. Also, generally Ministry of Health empowered with carrots to known as one of few places in Singapore where dish out. Exclusively reserved for a very senior opposition Members of Parliament can go Administrative Service Officer. (c.f. “Director of unrecognised. Medical Services”) Traditional Chinese Medicine A form of Polyclinics Healthcare institutions where the complementary medicine that professes to be poor and/or clever go to for primary medical traditional by getting its members to rely on care, and to get referrals to subsidised specialist radiological and laboratory investigations such outpatient clinics. as CT scans and tumour marker bioassays. ■ S M A N e w s October 2005 Vol 37 (10).

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