Visit to Tan Tock Seng Hospital

My mum had a fall recently and this morning she complained of pain.  She also complained that it was very painful for her to walk. My nephew who stays with her brought her to the hospital. X-rays were taken and the x-rays showed that she had dislocated her hip.

Naturally all my siblings went to visit her in the hospital today.  The hospital has a new visitor tracking system in place.  All visitors had to register with their identification cards.  This is not an issue as generally everyone has to have their identification papers with them at all times.  But the process was rather troublesome, I would say.

Previously there can be several visitors for one patient and no one would really stop you.  Even after the visiting hours.  Now this is no longer possible apparently.  In a way it is good so it can reduce the ratio of patient to visitors.  The process needs to be tweaked a little or some sort of awareness be made known to the general public.   

First I put my IC on the scanner and the machine captured my IC number.  Next I had to key in the ward number, bed number and patient's surname.  How difficult could these be?  Anyway, this is where I got really annoyed.  The system kept showing the first 4 digits of my IC.  So I hit the backspace button to enter the ward no.  The system then brought me back to the regisration screen!!

Then one of the counter staff who was assisting the other registrants stopped by to assist.  When she encountered the same problem, she realised that my IC was still on the scanner. She told me that I need to remove my IC as the machine is scanning my IC and that is why my IC number is shown on the ward number.  Anyway, there was no indication to remove my IC after the machine had scanned it!

My next grouse was that the system had asked for Patient's Surname.  So when I keyed my mum's surname, the system indicated error.  Apparently it was not the surname that was required.  Rather it was her first name!  So frustrating!!

I told my sisters that in future if we need to come to visit her in Tan Tock Seng, then only one person goes to the ward and bring her down so that more people can meet her at the cafeteria!  Less stress for everyone especially me!!!  Urgh!!