SINGAPORE: Enter one of the rooms in the basement of Singapore General Hospital’s (SGH) main building and a constant clanking and rattling of metal greets you.
One side of the room is filled with metal shelves, each neatly stacked with packages of varying sizes. Each package contains a complex set of surgical tools, with the heaviest weighing 10kg. These shelves are grouped according to departments, as seen from a myriad of signs such as orthopaedic, ENT surgery, neurosurgery, plastic surgery and dental.
Beyond the maze of shelves are washers, sterilising machines, trolleys and busy healthcare workers in scrubs.
This is where employees of the sterile supplies unit work round the clock to clean, assemble and pack surgical equipment used by operating theatres and procedure rooms throughout SGH, and even the nearby heart and eye centres.
One of them is senior enrolled nurse Loke Lye Chan, who makes sure that sterile surgical tools reach the hands of those who require them to save lives every day.
Madam Loke has been working at SGH for six decades, but the 81-year-old said the thought of retirement never crossed her mind.
“If I’m healthy, I will continue to be a nurse,” she told CNA in an interview earlier this month. “My job is very professional and I like my job very much. If not, I wouldn’t work until today.”