[update] 2013 MD2 - results release, year in review and looking ahead

Today the final results were released for MD2. I did not do as well as I would have liked to, but I have passed quite comfortably. We have not received our OSCE marks yet, but it is most likely the OSCEs are where I have lost marks again this year. Ah well. At least it seems like I won't have to sit any supplementaries or repeat this year!

I guess maybe a reason why I would have liked a better result was because I did a lot better in the progress test. For the final progress test, I received a score of 70/80, which is a major improvement from the first one I posted at the start of the year! That said, the progress test is only testing on MCQs, and I think it is in the OSCEs where I have not scored that well.

In terms of knowledge and MCQs, I think that practicing BMJ onExamination questions was very useful in gaining knowledge. There is a free subscription through the medical school. Being interactive, it can facilitate learning more than reading over lecture notes or books. The other thing for exams is because the university repeats many questions, well... fill in the rest of the sentence yourself.

Generally speaking, this has been an interesting year, in the clinical environment and learning about things which are directly related to clinical management which build upon our basic sciences in first year.

There were a few highlights for me this year in medicine personally. There was once a patient who we were examining in a bedside tutorial, and everyone in our tutorial group took turns to listen to his heart. When it was my turn, he jokingly asked me: "are you too young to do medicine? How old are you? 12?" I laughed a bit at this, and said to him "Yeah, I'm probably the youngest in the tutorial group. Just switch around the two digits." The ironic thing is that back in the times of undergraduate entry, my age would be average for the first clinical year. It was only "young" because this was a graduate entry course!

There were quite a few times where doctors and other staff at the hospital asked us medical students what courses we did before medicine or what other life experiences we may have had prior to doing this. Although there was the occasional person who did something quite different, usually the answer from most students would be science or biomedicine/biomedical science. This was exemplified once when a dermatologist was taking one of our lectures. He asked everyone to introduce themselves with their names and what they did before medicine. Almost everyone in the lecture theater systematically said their name and indicated that they previously did biomedicine, biomedical science or science! It was quite humorous and ironic indeed!

Another thing which was the highlight in the hospital was when I was following the ward round of the Director of General Medicine. One of the patients did not feel like eating their food that morning, and the professor noticed the full bowl of food on the table. I was very surprised when I saw her spending the time and effort to spoon up the contents of the bowl and help feed the patient herself! Very remarkable!

Another highlight was that I was part of the winning team for the Inter-Clinical School Quizbowl Championship. In fact, this was a total accident! I was planning to attend the final of the competition so that I could eat some free pizza and learn some medicine from the quiz answers. I wasn't part of the team which was supposed to represent St Vincent's, but one of the team members was having a rural GP placement and unable to attend the final. One of the other team members suggested that I take their place. I was quite nervous when we were sitting there waiting during the first round since we played in the second and third rounds that night, and even more so when taking the position ready to answer the questions. But I managed to get the first question of that second round right, and quickly got settled and got a few random questions right in that round, making a contribution to the team. It's funny what happens sometimes when you least expect it!

Looking ahead to next year, I am not that keen on some of those rotations, although some others might be interesting. I start off with the mental health rotation, then aged care, then GP. Semester 2 will consist of women's and children's health. I am not looking forward to the first two so much, but the later few should be better.

It has been just over three years since I first made this blog. I am already halfway through medicine! Time has gone by very quickly!

The blog post graph still has this annoying glitch which displays some years incorrectly, so I have corrected them in the diagram above. Although my blog views are higher than I would have ever imagined when I started the blog, I have lost readers recently. This would have been unexpected for me at the start of this year since I thought that people would be more interested in clinical medicine over preclinical medicine. However, the requirement to protect the confidentiality of patients precludes us from sharing too many of the interesting events which sometimes occur on the wards. I have erred on the safer side in not posting too much where confidentiality can be impaired, and thus I have not made as many posts this year compared to last year.

Perhaps another factor is because I have made some more posts about politics this year due to the election, and the "Scrap the cap" campaign issues. I have a feeling that many of you are not so interested in politics. But politics is quite important and as the scrap the cap campaign has highlighted, policies have quite a significant impact on our future not only in medicine but also in life in general. As such, I will continue posting on these matters whenever I feel it is necessary. However, given the electoral cycle, it is unlikely that I will post as much on these matters next year.

Regardless of all these factors mentioned, I guess I have to lift my game to make my blog more engaging to everyone in the future to get back to where I was before!

Finally, to everyone who enjoys reading my blog and commenting, thank you very much for your continued reading. I hope you continue to enjoy reading my blog into the future!

GAMSAT in 3 weeks

The GAMSAT is now just under three weeks away. If you are sitting it this year, I hope the preparation is going well. You may be interested in some of the tabs on the top if the page.

Meanwhile, I'm still getting used to the clinical school. It is cool how we get free tea, coffee and Milo supplied. Our clinical school is undergoing renovations at the moment though so we don't have table tennis or pool tables, but we should have them back soon.

Transition from university to hospital

Over the past few weeks, I've had to adjust to the hospital environment. Unlike at university where people can let their guard down at times, at public places in the hospital we must be prudent in our manner so that patients and doctors do not have a bad impression of us.

We are required to dress neatly, and at my clinical school, males are required to wear ties. They also like to send us txt messages to make announcements to us. So I guess they've kept up with the 21st century, unlike some primary and high schools. That reminds me of a UTAS professor who advocated for this kind of contact with high school students a few years ago. He said (paraphrased) "imagine the effect of a txt saying 'the principal wants to see you now'". Anyway, that's an aside.

Maybe our clinical school is old fashioned in some ways, but we are advised to refer to patients, other students and staff by their surname when on the wards, unless a patient told us they preferred their first name. That reminds me of a study showing that generally speaking, those who preferred to be referred to by surname rather than first name were older.

There is also the aspect of confidentiality. I am not someone who likes to talk about other people's secrets. However, for the purpose of improving our interview skills, I do have to debrief with my buddy and/or other people present at the time when I was doing the interview. During this time, we must make sure that others who were not present are not around. Another issue of confidentiality is that pulling the curtains around a bed when interviewing patients really doesn't prevent sound going through, but aside from bringing people into other rooms (which generally isn't done), we really don't do anything to stop others in the room hearing.

And finally, sometimes when I want to go from A to B quickly, I sometimes like to go down steps quickly and jump the last few steps before turning around to the next set of steps. Of course, it's not as extreme as sliding down the rails. But I was instinctively running and jumping down stairs a few days ago one or two times before realizing that maybe it wasn't such a good thing to do in a hospital as a medical student wearing a tie and having a hospital ID card.

[update] Grand Rounds

Today I sat in a Grand Round presentation for the first time. In the Grand Rounds, a few interesting cases are presented for doctors and medical students to listen about.

At my clinical school today, the topic was Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobulinuria; a rare disease. Cases were presented with a benefit with treatment of eculizumab, an inhibitor of C5; subsequent to which quality of life was improved and there was often no need for subsequent blood transfusions. Data from studies was also presented which showed a reduction in mortality with eculizumab treatment. However, the cost was not cheap; I think it was about $300000 per year for each patient. That raises a question about how much society is prepared to pay; there is a clear benefit to the patient, but money is limited.

The other thing I noticed at the Grand Round was all the pagers and mobile phones of doctors going off. Although I've been to the wards, I've only had two weeks at the clinical school so far so I haven't been attached to a team (that will come later). As such, although I've interviewed a few patients, I haven't really observed any consultants, HMOs or interns in action. All those pagers and mobile phones going off during the Grand Round just reinforces how busy they are!

[update] First clinical week completed.

Yesterday I finished my first week of clinical school. My clinical school decided to give us a relatively light first week. We only started at 8.30 on two days and only finished later than 3 pm once. We will definitely get longer hours in future weeks.

This week, our clinical groups were assigned to look at different parts of the hospital and report back. Our group looked at the kitchen. Our hospital is not small and also supplies food for other places, so the kitchen has an efficient production line process, where people at different parts of the process have different jobs; while still rotating the meals from day to day. Very impressive!

Another thing I have to do this year is get used to receiving online lectures, although the vast majority will still be in person; especially at the clinical school I go to. We didn't have any last year, and it took me a while to find them on the new IT system they have for medicine, but I've managed to find them now.

[update] MD2 starts next week.

Tomorrow will be the last day of my Immediate level Intensive Summer Course in Chinese. As I said earlier in my blog, my Chinese is not as good as I would like it to be, so this summer I decided to enroll in a course to improve it. If it doesn't clash with the start of the year for medicine next year, I might join it again next year if they have it available.

Today we were able to purchase the subject guides for second year medicine in the bookshop for $36. Here's what the whole pack looks like:

Since I'll be starting medicine again next week, I won't be available as often for GAMSAT and VCE tutoring; definitely not available during morning and afternoon of weekdays. Since I won't be able to satisfy all prospective demand as the GAMSAT approaches, anyone new who initiates contact regarding tuition from now on will have slightly increased fees. That said, the fees are still a lot lower than other GAMSAT tutors I have seen. See the GAMSAT Science 100 + VCE tutor link on the top of the page for updated information regarding tutoring.

[update] UniMelb clinical placement allocations out.

Today the clinical placement allocations were out for the Metro 1 and Metro 2 clinical zones. I was lucky to be allocated to the Metro 1 clinical zone (closest to the city and to my home), and today I was lucky again to receive my first preference of St Vincent's Clinical School.

It seems like this year in Metro 1, Austin was the least preferred with respect to the places available. Last year there were stories of people who put RMH third on their preference list of Metro 1 (St Vincent's, RMH and Austin) getting RMH, but this year that was true with Austin.

There are a two main reasons that I put St Vincent's first. It is the closest to my home, and the most convenient for me. I also liked the idea of having more tutorials, since I prefer things to be taught to me rather than having to look up things for myself. On the other hand, it has a reputation of being stricter than the other clinical schools, but I felt that those two reasons made it worth it. I'll see next year whether it was a good decision or not.