What it takes..

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim..

Alhamdulillah, my first posting would be surgery. Though it's not the posting that I've wanted, and my two best friends are posted in another posting together, nevertheless I am grateful to start off with surgery. Ever since I was in third year of medical school, I have started off with surgical posting. InshaAllah, I will try and do my best this Monday, which is the day that we are asked to report for duty and start our tagging.

We, in Hospital Temerloh will all start on this Monday whereas my friends who work in other hospitals have already experienced the hardships of tagging. To come to work as early as 6.30 am and to go back as late as 12 midnight. As my sister used to put it when she was working as houseman officer, "I got out from my house to go to work and I see the moon. And when I came out from the hospital to go home, I see the moon."

Well, this is the life that we are going to face for the next 2 weeks of our first posting, and for every 2 weeks for our next postings, until we finish our housemanship in 2 years time. InshaAllah..

Since I will only start working on Monday, so I decided to go home this weekend. My second youngest sister has just registered into CUCMS with MARA loan, last week and my mother and sister went to send her.

My mom told me yesterday, what the dean said on the day that they registered.

He said, "Though all other students who wishes to study medicine in local universities have a CGPA of 4.0, here in CUCMS we don't require you to get a CGPA of 4.0. Because being a doctor does not require you to be only intelligent, but most importantly you will need to also have passion for the profession. Because this profession, no doubt is challenging and those who are forced to do medicine will find it hard to cope with the challenges."

Well, nowadays everybody wants to become a doctor. Or is it?

Hahaha.. I am not sure. But I guess with the increasing numbers of houseman officers in the country and with the large numbers of local and overseas graduates, I can safely say so.

Some dreamed of being a doctor since little, like me. And some only went to medical school, to please their parents.

Well, either one it's fine. But like what the Dean said, if you don't have passion for the profession, you will have a hard time to cope with the stress. The stress of studying is much, much less from working.

Working as a doctor, our work involves mostly with human. We deal with lives. The responsibility of that is so great. Though I haven't start working yet, but I've already felt the burden on my shoulders. On the day that we all learned how to operate the computer system (Hospital Temerloh is entirely computerised), I started to have palpitations only by imagining what would happen if I ordered the wrong blood investigations, or typed in the wrong information for a patient.
Being a student, we have no responsibilities whatsoever. Our responsibilities were only to learn and the patients are our textbooks. But being a houseman officer, the patients become our responsibilities.

When you deal with humans; your patients, their families, your co-workers and superiors, lab technicians, staff nurses, what will help you is not your intelligence. It's your attitude. For your patients, it's the ability to empathize.  And for those who will be working around you, like the staff nurses and lab techs, your attitude and your common sense will determine how well you'll go along together.

I pray hard everyday, that my journey throughout these 2 years will be self-growing one. I prayed that it will be easy, but most importantly I want to be trained as much as I can during this 2 years so that I could be a safe doctor for my patients. I remember my professor said to me, to pray each time after my solat, and ask for Allah's guidance, and help in each and every patients, and each and every obstacles. After all, all our knowledge about medicine and about life, and everything that will happen to me and to the patients are from Him. There is no God but Allah..

Well, for those who aspire to become a doctor please reflect back the real intention for you to want to become one because this path that you've chosen is not an easy one. I have a few friends who dropped off from medical school because in the middle of the road, they realised that this is not the career for them. The reason might be because of lack of social skills (this is a very important skill in this profession!) or perhaps they'd rather work from 8 to 5 pm everyday and be able to return to their families every night.

If it is for fame, you should better be an singer, or actor, or a politician.
If it is for money, you are better paid doing business, selling Herbalife or other things.
But if you have empathy, and would really want to sacrifice your life to serve the public and the country and working long hours, then the doors of medicine will surely open widely for you. =)

Wallahu'alam..