I had a bad day

Because of missed communication and misunderstanding, I made my lecturer waited for my group in the ward and in the end, i did not turn up, this was happened yesterday. The day before, i called her up and she replied as "see you in the ward tomorrow at 10.30am", and i perceived it as she wanted to meet me personally in the ward to fix a time for ward round. The next day, i went down to dermatology clinic at 9.30am and i thought i was able to meet her after my clinic and tutorial, as i thought she would be doing her ward round. After everything ended at 12.40pm, i went back to the ward and she wasn't there already. I called her and she was so angry with me and today she met my whole group, just to scold me alone in front of the others. Thanks to my group mates, they understand me.

Yea i admit it was my fault, i should have presented to her at 10.30am in the ward, or at least, i should call her from the clinic. I felt so sorry, nothing more i can do, just hoping that she will get well very very soon forgiving us. What can i hope more? Hope that lecturers can convey their message well next time.

The second incidence, made a ward round session with another lecturer at 10am, the whole group waited for him since 9am. It happened to be at the same time, another lecturer was doing ward round and he was willing to teach, so the whole group followed his round. When it came to around 10am, i kept going out from the cubicles to see if that lecturer came to the ward, but i never saw him until 10.20am, i called him, he said he would come soon, then i joined back the ward round, kept looking at the corridor. At 10.40am, a staff nurse came to us asking whether we had appointment with that lecturer and she said the lecturer was waiting outside the ward. Immediately we chased after him and all of us went up to ward 13U and he was there. When he attended to us, he scolded us because we were letting him waited for us since 10.10am, and his plan was spoiled because of us. Come on lecturer, i understand that your time is very precious, but if you were to look for somebody in the ward, will you just standing outside the ward and look for us through the windows?? If you were waiting since 10.10am, were you in 13U or outside 4U?

He said that this is the hierarchy of a medical profession, from consultant to lecturer to medical officer to house man to medical student(super senior) to 1st year medical student. Just like in army and police, the superior has to be harsh in order to train better staffs. Yes this is so true and i never question their experience and knowledge, but can the lecturers be reasonable a bit?? Perhaps it was my fault again, because i made them angry? Sometimes i really fade up of becoming a group "representative", feel so sorry whenever calling a lecturer because it might disturb their works, when the lecturer does not turn up at the time fixed, the group mates rely on me to call up the lecturer, as they could not wait more, which i think it's very troublesome for the lecturer as he or she might be on their way rushing to bring us a class. As a medical student, what we can do is just waiting, that's the lesson i learned today.

It's been a bad day for me, i have never been "orientated" like this since first few weeks i entered medical school. Truely bad, and the third incidence, which happened when i lost a bet at night. Haih today is really not my day..... cause i had a bad day!! Who can sing this song to me??

Another tiring week

It's been a week for another new posting, which is Internal Medicine posting. For the whole week, I have been very busy with studies and ward works. I started off my Medicine posting by Haematology (blood) and Renal (kidney) postings which have a lot of patients to cover, relatively more compared to Endocrinology and Rheumatology group. For this week, my group and I have attended all the ward rounds, where the consultant, lecturers and the doctors in charge will go bed by bed to discuss the issues on all the patients. What are we there?? To me we were just walking sponges following the consultants and lecturers just to absorb whatever they discussed during the ward rounds, which may become very useful for us in the future to decide how to treat patients.

Besides ward rounds, we also had 3 teaching rounds with 3 different lecturers, which made our schedule even more packed and we had to cover the old and new admissions whenever there is general rounds and teaching rounds. Not to forget about the night on-call, which is also a burden for us, luckily I have had 1 on the Monday, and thus no more rotation for me at least for the rest of the week. Hmm… not too bad, what made the conditions even worse is that this is the first week of orientation for our beloved freshies or first year juniors who just came to join my course started 2 weeks ago. To welcome them, we have special ways in making them a better juniors or doctors. For each session of orientation, all of my final year batch mates will have to come down to meet them and all of us had to spend a few hours in talking and playing with them, scarifying our study time. This had caused me to have severe sleep deprivation which I manifested during ward rounds, yawning non-stop!! So torturing and embarrassing……

“If you can’t withstand the stress of orientation, then you will never be able to withstand the stress of becoming a doctor!” this is the statement that I always tell my juniors where I got it from my seniors. It is so true, the stress of a doctor is much more than a stress that a freshie can meet during orientation, which I gradually can experience as more responsibilities are put upon me as a doctor to be in not a very long period. My stress is not only from the study and works, but also from the stress of sleep deprivation, which is even more severe during this orientation week. So tired, so stressed and so not simple of becoming a super senior......