[update] Aged care rotation and research project selections

I am now two weeks into the aged care rotation. So far, I am enjoying this rotation a lot more than mental health. I have heard several others say that they enjoyed mental health a lot more than aged care, but I found the opposite.

For me, it was very refreshing to go around in the ward round and see the patients being asked history questions and being examined, with medications being reviewed. Due to the holiday at the end of the year and the mental health rotation, it had been very long since I had seen patients having their chest listened to or their JVP checked. It was as if I had almost forgotten that these things could actually be done!

It was also refreshing that we didn't need to spend too long with each patient. For me, mental health was very draining, spending such a long time with each patient during a ward round.

In this rotation, apart from general medicine, there is more emphasis on learning on things such as falls, incontinence, reduced mobility, delirium and dementia. It was interesting to see some of the more functional tests in action too, such as the functional reach test and three minute walk test, while the standard neurological exams and eye exams were also performed to examine for potential causes of a fall.

I will have one more week in the geriatric medicine ward, then I will have a few weeks of palliative care, before my GP rotation.


There have also been sessions recently at the various hospitals advertising about scholarly selective projects that they want us to do. The scholarly selective is a research project during the first semester of fourth year MD at Melbourne. I am personally trying to look for some cardiology related projects and contacted a few supervisors, looking forward to meeting them. Some of them are in Austin though, which requires traveling by me from St Vincent's, which takes up considerable time. I haven't conducted any research before myself, so I am looking forward to this research semester next year.