My M5 Experience ..
I was asked to write my M5 experience in the capacity of the final year class representative, with my photo in the class yearbook.. better keep a copy here just in case my computer explodes again ..
"Hihi=) I am James Huang the class representative for the final year. It is indeed my pleasure to ink out what my experience for the final year has been like.
All in all this year went past helter-skelter, with postings flying past us like flower-pots in a maelstrom. Like our seniors promised, the final year was indeed a mentally exhausting and challenging time for all of us. It was a very sharp contrast from the generally relaxing pace of Year 4 (save the O&G posting but that’s another story :P) and the wonderful elective period. Even as much of Year 5 decayed by, there was still this perpetual feeling of insecurity surrounding me – somehow there seemed to be no humanly possible way to engulf all that knowledge tutors expected us to know. For instance, from knowing the colours of different asthmatic inhalers and INR/lipid/blood pressure targets in Medicine, to the crazy myriad of developmental age markers and Greek labyrinthine-like flowcharts on the management of vesicoureteric reflux; to the billions of classification systems in Orthopaedics, it was just this gigantic snowball of latin names/dosages/landmarks/figures rolling after your behind.
The road had always been somewhat long and tough, especially in the clinical years. Unlike the pre-clinicals where lectures and lecture-notes were neatly placed in front of you, the clinical years were a lot more unpredictable. Roaming throughout the wards aimlessly like wandering spirits looking for the elusive patient with Eisenmenger’s syndrome who had sought permanent asylum in the dayroom ; begging and assuring patients that the physical examination would be “very fast one” or “just one time then no more ok?” when there were 10 other students cleverly camouflaging themselves behind the curtains. Such were the pains of clinical work. While tutors were incessantly urging us to maximize our time in the wards, we, as seasoned clinical year students, knew that it was more of striking a fine balance between ward-work and mugging.
As SIP interns, we were either very heavily involved in ensuring the patients had their daily hematomas on their arms and their beds fashionably spotted with an ecletic mix of blood/chlorhexidine/povidone-iodine ; or on the other extreme, acting as phantoms of the surgical ward that somehow made the curtains draw and temperature charts/IMR magically appear. I also remember the elderly lady (and her banshee scream of course) who dug her Wolverine-like nails into my arm, as I struggled with my ABG at 3 am in the morning. I also remember another delirous patient who clawed and cussed at me while I tried to hold her into a fetal postion for a lumbar puncture. Athletics were also part of the curriculum – a compulsory fast march ahead of the consultants/registrars in the ward round to reach the next patient before they do; a 4 x 10m shuttle run to and from the nurse’s station to fetch peak flow meters, X-rays, swab sticks or whatever your team fancies. Last but not least, coaxing nurses, who were clutching onto the IMRs/temperature charts a la Gollum and his “precious”, to allow us to conduct our mini-ward round before the consultants arrived. All in all, it was a sheer tiring experience, but a lot of us indeed came out much more oriented to the expectations of housemanship ( at least for the Medicine SIP hehe=) )
Yet, it is heartening to see that all of us had matured together as a batch, from naive students fresh out of army/junior college in year 1 , to aspiring physicians and surgeons. The future seems even more exciting as we branch off into our various specialities come housemanship. I really cannot imagine how funny it will be to see which one of us will become the next terror of medical students during end-of-posting tests or say, the next top cosmetic surgeon . Come the last paper of our MBBS, only the sky’s the limit for us and a universe of possibilities await. Cliched yeah.. but that’s all I can think of haha.. "
"Hihi=) I am James Huang the class representative for the final year. It is indeed my pleasure to ink out what my experience for the final year has been like.
All in all this year went past helter-skelter, with postings flying past us like flower-pots in a maelstrom. Like our seniors promised, the final year was indeed a mentally exhausting and challenging time for all of us. It was a very sharp contrast from the generally relaxing pace of Year 4 (save the O&G posting but that’s another story :P) and the wonderful elective period. Even as much of Year 5 decayed by, there was still this perpetual feeling of insecurity surrounding me – somehow there seemed to be no humanly possible way to engulf all that knowledge tutors expected us to know. For instance, from knowing the colours of different asthmatic inhalers and INR/lipid/blood pressure targets in Medicine, to the crazy myriad of developmental age markers and Greek labyrinthine-like flowcharts on the management of vesicoureteric reflux; to the billions of classification systems in Orthopaedics, it was just this gigantic snowball of latin names/dosages/landmarks/figures rolling after your behind.
The road had always been somewhat long and tough, especially in the clinical years. Unlike the pre-clinicals where lectures and lecture-notes were neatly placed in front of you, the clinical years were a lot more unpredictable. Roaming throughout the wards aimlessly like wandering spirits looking for the elusive patient with Eisenmenger’s syndrome who had sought permanent asylum in the dayroom ; begging and assuring patients that the physical examination would be “very fast one” or “just one time then no more ok?” when there were 10 other students cleverly camouflaging themselves behind the curtains. Such were the pains of clinical work. While tutors were incessantly urging us to maximize our time in the wards, we, as seasoned clinical year students, knew that it was more of striking a fine balance between ward-work and mugging.
As SIP interns, we were either very heavily involved in ensuring the patients had their daily hematomas on their arms and their beds fashionably spotted with an ecletic mix of blood/chlorhexidine/povidone-iodine ; or on the other extreme, acting as phantoms of the surgical ward that somehow made the curtains draw and temperature charts/IMR magically appear. I also remember the elderly lady (and her banshee scream of course) who dug her Wolverine-like nails into my arm, as I struggled with my ABG at 3 am in the morning. I also remember another delirous patient who clawed and cussed at me while I tried to hold her into a fetal postion for a lumbar puncture. Athletics were also part of the curriculum – a compulsory fast march ahead of the consultants/registrars in the ward round to reach the next patient before they do; a 4 x 10m shuttle run to and from the nurse’s station to fetch peak flow meters, X-rays, swab sticks or whatever your team fancies. Last but not least, coaxing nurses, who were clutching onto the IMRs/temperature charts a la Gollum and his “precious”, to allow us to conduct our mini-ward round before the consultants arrived. All in all, it was a sheer tiring experience, but a lot of us indeed came out much more oriented to the expectations of housemanship ( at least for the Medicine SIP hehe=) )
Yet, it is heartening to see that all of us had matured together as a batch, from naive students fresh out of army/junior college in year 1 , to aspiring physicians and surgeons. The future seems even more exciting as we branch off into our various specialities come housemanship. I really cannot imagine how funny it will be to see which one of us will become the next terror of medical students during end-of-posting tests or say, the next top cosmetic surgeon . Come the last paper of our MBBS, only the sky’s the limit for us and a universe of possibilities await. Cliched yeah.. but that’s all I can think of haha.. "
posted by James Huang at 10:44 PM
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