Saturday, July 7, 2012

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..

Thursday, July 5, 2012

House Officer Guidebook

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim...

Here in Hospital Temerloh, before you start tagging in your respective postings, you need to undergo a one week orientation.

Too much things to tell about the orientation week.. but there are pros and cons of it. I honestly believe that having gone through the orientation week, I understand better regarding the procedures and protocols of the hospital.

There are certain things that they didn't teach you in medical school like The Order of Draw, or how many times to shake the sample tubes to prevent it from clotting.

These are the examples of mistakes that house officers do all the time. Why is it very important because if your sample clotted or get contaminated, it will be rejected. And that will cost money. Tax payers' money that are better spent on other important things.

Apart from that, we were given various reading materials for guidelines. One that I would like to recommend here to read before you start working is the Houseman Officer Guidebook by the Malaysian Medical Council

You can easily download the PDF version from the official website here

Pray until the day you die..

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim..

Today, I witnessed a very disturbing situation.. I came to work today at 6.30 am and I saw that all the lights in the cubicles were out, and all the patients are fast asleep. As usual, in the morning when we come for work we will do our morning reviews of all patients in the ward. Since I am tagging and still new I only review the stable patients in the open cubicles and in the room. What disturbs me today is that today I learned that a Muslim patient did not wake up for the morning prayers. How I know this was because I asked one of the patients that I saw whether he perform his prayer or not. He informed me that he did not because he has a urinary catheter inserted. I was shocked and puzzled at the same time. Shocked because if this patient did not pray because of the urinary catheter, I wonder how many prayers have he missed since he has been on the tube since the past few months.. Puzzled because from what I've learned it is permissible to pray while having a urinary catheter or stoma on. Allah has made this religion easy and practical. If we don't have water or can't use water for ablution, we can use dust to tayammum. It shows that no matter what, you must perform your prayers. That morning I spent a few minutes telling the patient that eventhough he's wearing a urinary catheter he could still perfom salah. I realised that this is my duty as a muslim. I could not bear to think how would I answer in front of Allah later if I just ignore this. I couldn't bear to imagine if this patient dies and I didn't take the oppurtunity to inform him.. I made a note to myself to look up and research regarding the issues of prayer among sick people. However, up until today I still haven't gotten around to it yet. InshaAllah I hope I could do it and share the information here a.s.a.p. If dear readers have any page to recommend, please do tell me. Jazakumullau khair!

Communication between two generations

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim...

I've always wondered why people love asking other people to give them feedback, or ask questions when the person requesting that is not even ready to hear what the other person has to say...

In this life, it is hard to maintain an open heart. To be able to accept anything people say requires a very brave heart. To be able to consider with adequate justification what other people are telling you or complaining at you requires wisdom and maturity.

Maturity is not measured by your age, nor by your life experiences.

You can aged 100 years old, but still could be considered immature if you think that you are the wisest person in the whole world because you are the oldest.

You can have traveled to all the places in the world, but you wouldn't be mature enough if you wouldn't want to see, hear, feel and reflect the things that you see at the places you visited.

Maturity won't be gained by only experiencing the sweet things in life. You have to also experience the bitterness and the sourness. It's not just beautiful and bright colours, you have to also accept it for the black, white and grey. When you've already accept the world for what it is, then you would understand.

There was once, a bus driver who got annoyed at me because I used the "wrong" name for the road and mosque that I wished to stop at. The name of the road and mosque that I told him was actually the real name and I know this because I lived in that area. But, he got really annoyed at me and said in an annoyed voice that I shouldn't have addressed him 'pakcik' or uncle because he said that actually I am older than him. I told him that I just graduated from university and from what I can see, he was definitely older than I am. With an annoyed voice he shot back that it does not matter, I am still older than him.
At that point, I have an urge to say back to him, "Yes, you are quite right. I am not older than you based on our age, but I am older than you in term of maturity."

But I held my tongue and try to calm myself down to avoid having arguments with him..

At that point, I realise that a lot of people nowadays, think that they are mature because they are older. They think that they ought to be respected because they are older. I am not saying that I don't respect the elders. I do. But some people just take the respect that other people are showing to them for granted, thinking that they ought to be respected all the time regardless of what they do.
Most people don't realise that, respect need to be gained. You cannot ask to be respected. Only eqoistic people will ask to be respected.

Wise and mature people won't ask to be respected. They just will automatically be respected by others due to their wisdom and character.

When two generations gained wisdom and maturity, we would be able to communicate easily. But to have that, two generations need to be able to accept each other, wanting to understand each other, and celebrate each other's differences.

Just like a father and a son; both want the other to accept the other one's point of view, but if we continue asking people to understand us, we would never be able to accept the other person. Not, until we decide to try to understand the other person first. Seek first to understand, than to be understood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRwNEjk8vc4