Return to SRRSH

By Damaris Matthews, English Teacher

Arriving in mid September, I knew a long time had passed, 402 days to be precise, since I had last seen Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital (SRRSH). I was eager to renew acquaintances and to once more take up the mantle of teaching conversational English to hospital staff.  Some of this would have to wait, however, because SRRSH was in the middle of applying for a fourth term of Joint Commission International re-accreditation. 

The entire hospital was caught up in a whirlwind of activity in preparation for the visit from JCI surveyors.  Quality Management Department (QM), headed by Dr. Cai Bin, led the charge for accreditation renewal, but to help in this prolonged and intensive work, 15 other staff from across the campus were temporarily assigned to that office to investigate processes and create needed reports that the surveyors would need to see at the time of their site visit, starting on October 2.  Since the application was for international accreditation, a number of documents needed to be well written in English; therefore, the English teacher was temporarily assigned to QM as well.

Since I cannot read Chinese, various staff members translated the documents to their version English before passing them to me. The amount of work that I needed put in after that varied greatly according to the subject matter (nuclear medicine!) and skill level of the previous writer. I worked closely with one nurse – Charlotte – who has an excellent command of English, and an excellent sense of what happens in each department.  I was so glad that she was beside me as I worked, for when I needed clarification on either vocabulary or processes from Admissions to Waste Management, Charlotte had the answer for me or could soon find it.

Now it is mid October and, of course, SRRSH passed reaccreditation standards!  With so many people working days, nights and weekends, the outcome was never in doubt.  Now I can breathe a little easier, return to Jina, Amy and Elaine in the CIC Office and enjoy teaching my classes.  Already more than 70 staff members have attended their first class session where we talked about many subjects from introducing others, to healthy bodies to personal heroes. I have time again to walk along West Lake or the Qiantang River or to eat out with old friends.  But most of all, I have plenty of time to make new friends at SRRSH in the coming year.