CAMIE

CAMIE, an acronym that will be stuck with me for a long time, is kind of driving me crazy. CAMIE stands for Caring for the Acute Mentally Infirmed Elderly. Together with a few of my other colleagues, I have been selected to nurse elderly patients who are deemed mentally infirmed, for example, suffering from dementia or delirium, with effect from 1 August under the project name CAMIE.

While I am fine with the idea of nursing demented and delirious patients, the whole idea that I will be placed in the team for no definite duration drives me nuts.  As much as I understand that this group of patients requires an environment that is constant (i.e. they need to see familiar faces hence nurses caring for them will always remain in the same team), I am disappointed that I may be able to nurse patients with other common geriatric conditions.  I want to be in touch with "reality" (exposure to the various geriatric medical conditions) in order to be a better nurse, not just a CAMIE nurse.  So while I hope for the best in my new endeavour, I pray I can still get to be rotated to the other teams once in a while.

One of the reasons why I have been shortlisted for the role of CAMIE nurse is my ability to speak 3 other local dialects apart from English and Mandarin  Communication with demented elderly is crucial.  Yet, I am appalled by the fact that some of those shortlisted for this role was simply singled out because their preceptor (or mentor) was selected.  They had neither interest  in CAMIE nor ability to speak the elderly's language.  How challenging!  And to top it up, most of us selected for this assignment had not been given the opportunity to attend the necessary training or given a detailed briefing of what to expect when the CAMIE project officially kick off.

Now, for any projects to be successful, I believed participants involved must know what they are in for, understand what is the expected of its team members, and be educated on what is the ultimate goal of the team.  There is a Chinese saying 工欲善其事，必先利其器。 It means you need to sharpen your tools if you wish to succeed in whatever you do.  Simple as that.

My first training was a one-hour session with the senior occupational therapist yesterday who covered the theories of organising therapeutic activities for demented patients.  Well, I had no idea nurses in the CAMIE team had to organise therapeutic activities until yesterday (yes, that's how bad the communication channel was).  The session was held at 1515hr, when all the trainees (except one) was dead beat after a whole morning shift of showering, changing and feeding patients, on top of many other nursing activities.  Not quite effective for a start, I should say.  And only one participant had attended a formal training on Person Centered Care (PCC) which is crucial to nursing this group of vulnerable patients.  That spells knowledge deficit!  The even more shocking news was - there isn't another training session on PCC scheduled for the rest of the year.  It is held annually and we had "missed the boat" this year.  How "encouraging"!

What I am trying to bring across is the need to bridge the knowledge deficit chasm if we were to deliver the vision of the CAMIE team.  Trial and errors are expected when a team embark on a road less travelled but this is real patients we are talking about!  Nope, no patient's safety is going to be at risk because we are all trained nurses and healthcare professionals.  But we could expect better nursing care and improved patient outcome if we get things done right the first time.  So imparting the right knowledge to the right group of people just so that we could do the right things is paramount to the project.  CAMIE project did not just surfaced recently.  It had been month since it was first conceptualised.  Though nursing staff work on 3-rotating shifts, hence a challenge to gather all of us together for proper training session, majority of the staff would have been briefed and educated by now if we had started planning way ahead.  The truth is, I can tell my superiors are not quite enthusiastic about the project themselves.  Sad...

Nonetheless, I am looking forward to the challenges God had prepared for me.  I have been asking God for clear direction in my career options, so this could well be the first step in His itinerary for me.  I pray for joy and peace as I take the step of faith forward, so CAMIE - here I come!

"Even to your old age and grey hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you." - Isaiah 46:4 (NIV)