Tuesday, December 7, 2010

The wonderful feeling

of passing second year. Let me describe the scene, blow-by-blow, as we take an instant replay on the event that unfolded. In the bottom-left corner with the blue gloves, weighing 52kg and raring to go, is Ruke. A scrawny, inexperienced and desperate fighter, needing to win this bout or hell ensues at home. In the top-right corner with the red gloves, are second year exam results. In their past matchup, the fight ended with a last-round TKO to give results the win, so this promises to be a tight one. The referee was nowhere to be found.
The bell rings, as the two fighters both approach each other in the centre; Ruke feels the nerves, as the clear underdog of the event, with much to lose and win this match. No matter, he is a determined fighter, and quickly takes the upper-hand with a left uppercut (OSCE) to the chin! The results stagger back, clearly maimed but hungry for blood, bouncing back and throwing a quick 1-2. Ruke dodges and fires off a right hook, only to be evaded and rewarded with a left hook (MEQ) from results! Stunned, Ruke takes a moment to recover, and quickly puts up his hands to defend from another onslaught. Taking his time, weaving and evading throws from the opponent, he waits, sees an opening and goes straight for an undefended chest (SAQ)! Brimming with confidence at the pure luck of the blow, he barrels in the punches, raining them on his helpless foe (MCQs one and two), and sends those results on the ground! He can't get up! It's all over! Ruke, stunned by this unlikely victory, passes through the next round (third year) - sure he's got a few grazes and a half-dozen broken ribs, but the grin he's got is showing no signs of the damage! Over and out!


So, yeah. I annoyed many a friend through my rather irritating commentary, complete with faux commercials and sponsors, and it's clear I probably don't have a future in writing. Nonetheless, nothing beats the feeling of getting through to next year - second year is in my opinion the worst year of the course, difficult yet not really in clinical stages, with comparatively little clinical contact compared to the years ahead. So third year, here I come!

Friday, November 26, 2010

Conference - Where kids can come to act smart

Only a couple of days out from finishing with the last of exams for this year, I was celebrating hard-stylez by attending the wonderful Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute conference titled "Charting the depths of RNA". I must've been off my head or something, but I was really quite keen to attend this, listen to some awesome international speakers and generally learn something new. Once again, the experience of this conference was quite similar to the ISAN experience I blogged about more than a year ago; this time, without the good night's sleep, thanks to several friends (who don't do med) kindly playing Trivial Pursuit at my place till 1:30am - although I should be also to blame, I didn't have the heart to kick them out earlier...
At any rate, the conference was quite interesting, if you were a researcher in all the new and wonderful types of RNA around - microRNA, snRNA, and some other RNA's with small-letter prefixes that I couldn't remember. For the average medical student (and I didn't spot many, most seemed to be science students), it was next to useless, with perhaps the very interesting exception about novel therapies for Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy (one to look up if you don't know what it is) and other clinical applications of microRNA. This was more focused on the variants of RNA rather than the old regular RNA that you read in the textbooks - it seems that, for the last few decades, we've getting it rather wrong and have not realised the importance of these microRNA things, which do not contain genetic code to translate into proteins, per se, but instead modify expression of regular DNA. A prime example of why this was important was given in the introductory speech by a Head of Science in UNSW, whereby it was noted that the number of DNA genes that coded for proteins (what we focus on in med school) did not necessarily correlate with complexity, but the number of genes not coding for proteins and instead doing something else, DID correlate with complexity - i.e. humans had more than, say, the fruit fly. This, I thought, was a rather succinct point which helped me concentrate through the first couple of talks, then fall asleep at some of the others and generally lose focus. The technical detail in the conference was enormous, and most of it went right over our heads (went with a friend, who was equally keen on this), but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.
The food was of average standard; to me, a rather undistinguished eater, the party meat pies were the most delectable, followed (by a long way) by this random ball of what tasted like cooked self-raising flour (with no eggs or milk), and then some rather unsavoury sandwiches. But hey, we didn't come for the food. Another aspect of the conference were the sponsors, which were very nice people - they handed me pens (they should upgrade to BIC promotional pens or something, pens aren't much good if they can't write), much needed Post-it notes, and even a thing that blocks out light from your eyes when you sleep - can't remember what it's called, unfortunately. That was a fun part of the conference.
In all fairness, as I stated above, I thought it was a great conference for those involved in the field. For us, the relevance is still there, but the clinical talks were few and far in between, it was very clearly pitched to scientists, as they were revising how the heart worked in one of the talks on Atrial Fibrillation. In contrast, they glossed over the basics of microRNA and did not mention the basics on the techniques used to extract RNA and assess it. Overall, I thought it was a good day out, a nice way to celebrate the end of exams, and a great way to give you a headache were you unfortunate enough to try to pay attention whilst not knowing what in the world microRNA was.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Summer times!

So, a couple of days ago, I finished with exams, hoorah! The actual exams were a kind of mixed bag...once again, an SAQ (Short answer questions - marks ranging anywhere from 1 through to 5), MEQ (Mini Essay Questions - generally short questions based on a scenario, in total worth 10-20 marks per scenario, 7 questions), and two MCQs (Multiple Choice Questions - yeah, I'm sure you're all more than familiar with them). Found the SAQ and the last MCQ difficult, MEQ and the first MCQ bearable but only slightly - which hardly raises my confidence levels, but what the heck - its OVER! Celebrate! *party poppers!* *streams of paper cover the room* *smiles all around*

Shame we had such a party pooper for our main supervisor in our last exam. Was really rather strict about no talking after the exam... I know, that's what is meant to happen, but it is nice to smile around, mouth "how did you go?", mouth back "omg that was so hard" and grin without being scolded for it.

At any rate, with the holidays now here, endless opportunity abounds. I could continue to learn guitar, start learning mandarin, maybe read some medical journals or finish summarising Boron... or continue dreaming, continuing procrastination methods, starting new games. Hmm. Endless opportunity... I would like to be optimistic these holidays, and believe I will at least moderate the two extremes and meet somewhere in the middle, like the good negotiator I am now supposed to be after intense training in student politics. I guess one can only simply start doing it rather than think about it, since thinking about it rarely leads to anything productive (for me, it leads to a game of minesweeper - reaching the 100 second mark on expert btw). Speaking of student politics stuff, these holidays will most likely represent my only significant chunk of time I can dedicate to it for this and next year; I'm getting the feeling that things like extracurricula are going to have to take second priority and be slotted in amongst the clinical attachments, which is probably a feeling amongst almost every full-time worker in the workforce; that everything seems to take second priority after work. Mulling on this, things like a family and religion may become difficult to maintain, and time management is really a rather critical thing to learn when young; when you hear statements like "your most precious asset is time", you think "hey, that makes sense, I agree!" but in real life I think that I, personally, forget about that, especially when procrastinating. Value your time, for it only comes around once...

On a more interesting note, I've just got wind recently of an exciting new project happening at UWS! A person that I'm working together with as part of the Campbelltown Campus Life Committee (mostly UWS Staff, and the sole student rep, me) is heading a new inter-professional project, whereby students of different professional pathways (Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, Nursing, and of course Medicine - with a few more maybe added in together) are mentored by professionals of their own chosen pathways, as well as of others. The goal of this project is to foster holistic, integrated and thus (hopefully) a better standard of healthcare in our future professionals. I'm not entirely sure as to how much I can reveal, but essentially, the sessions of the project would occur in an integrated clinic that already exists, whereby clinicians take up students and guide them to facilitate the treatment of real patients, rather than be a wallflower and observe passively. This is the most exciting thing of this development - more clinical exposure, to better prepare us for the future! A friend of mine commented on how this would have been great if it were introduced earlier, seeing as my cohort will be in full-time clinicals next year anyway; but nonetheless, it will most likely be a wonderful opportunity for the future students at UWS. Hopefully it goes to plan and produces some positive results!

Anyway, I hope you have an awesome break, especially those of you who've just completed the wonderful journey that is secondary school, and I'll see you around!

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Busy as a bee can be

As one may have noticed, my rate of posting has really, really slowed down. I guess it's inevitable thing that happens as priorities pile up, and I've noticed the same goes for computer games and watching TV series - all huge time-wasters that eventually have little to no place in my life anymore... for once, I'm seeing some truth in the stereotype that games are for kids, the adult's life seems too busy to regularly follow the games scene, especially since it is so fast-paced.

Anyway, third-year placements came out just a few days ago. I'm especially thrilled because not only do I have the closest hospitals to my home possible (Blacktown and Mt Druitt) but also because the rotations that I got happened to be amongst my top preferences! For those who don't know, UWS' medical degree from years 3-5 is essentially full-time clinical rotations, which involve you being attached with a medical or surgical team for the large bulk of the year, in the hospitals; with some time being given to other types of attachments such as Medicine In Context, which I'm still not quite crystal clear on. So yes, this means that second year already marks the end of our "university" university experience; I recently attended a friend's 20th, which was surprisingly lavish for a 20th - one of my other's friend's speeches remarked upon the idea that the party was so lavish because it was the last year our grade would be together as a combined cohort, and I suddenly felt quite moved. Yes, we will see each other during conference weeks (epically long days of lecture after lecture for a week) and in hospital, but not in the frequency as we do at the moment. I guess it was appropriate, then, that the party had quite a 'year 12 formal' feel to it.

So, I'm only two weeks away from our summative OSCE, one day away from an event I'm co-organising as part of the student union, and a few days away from a week-long sports event that a student collective at UWS Campbelltown is organising. Oh, and if you're curious, we made a promo video for the week: Inter-Society Sports Week on Youtube. Busy as a bee can be, you see.

Friday, August 27, 2010

A clinical focus...

So, over the last month or so, me and one of my good friends have decided to stay back after our compulsory ICM (Introduction to Clinical Medicine) tutorials with our awesome doctor, who kindly agreed to letting us tag along for the remainder of the afternoon. Over the weeks we've decided to make this permanent, since we've actually been learning a lot and getting significantly more patient contact than if we just sat on our bums and let all our clinical experience come from our ICM and PCS (Procedural Skills) - a total of 3 hours per week. In addition, the last few weeks have been difficult in terms of integrating the content of ICM tutes and patient contact, as we've been doing all the sensitive topics - the reproductive system and other things like illicit drug histories; so we've only had a couple of patients over the 7 weeks we've had of this semester. A few events that transpired today were quite noteworthy, and I will remember for as long as I live: (a) I was walking out from the hospital after ICM with my friend when I turned my head casually, just looking around, when I noticed a lady lying on the ground, spread out with a car stopped a few metres behind her. Fearing the worst, my friend and I rushed to the lady, who did not in fact get run over (and in this situation I was quite perplexed, for I was sure I didn't hear any screeching or noise generally accompanying a motor incident) but instead was lying down as a protest, determining not to budge as she didn't get the medication she wanted from the docs. I never really followed up on this, as another lady who she knew got her back up and convinced her that this was not the right way to go about it. (b) I was on ward rounds when, a few metres away, there broke an altercation between a patient and her doc, the patient demanding to know why her medication was reduced. The doc tried to explain but was probably a little bit tired or somewhat out of it, accounting for her snappy response and not as-friendly-as-demonstration-doctors-in-teaching-videos are, resulting most probably in.... (c) a MET call on the same ward; at the time we (my doc, a resident, my friend and myself) were attending to another patient in a different room; it turned it out that it was that same patient who probably did not receive a response she quite liked and decided to protest against it by trying to hang herself. From this, I saw first-hand the lessons of PPD (Personal and Professional Development) which included the fact that (a) docs can be snappy, and because of this, could lead to (b) an emotive, distraught patient doing things that are not good for themselves or anyone around them. Reflecting on this, amongst my friends and those who've met me, I'm often considered a very even-headed person who is slow to anger and is generally helpful; but I know that, especially in times when I'm exhausted, I become really apathetic to anything not concerning some shut-eye, and I don't know how or even if I can prevent that. Something to think about, perhaps.

In another related thought, I've started to see myself less of an annoying medical student and more as a part of a healthcare team. The ward rounds have somewhat impacted this shift in attitude, but in addition to that, one specific thing: me and my friend (yes, the same one; we're good buddies, hehe) were on our own, going to interview an elderly patient. Only a couple of minutes into the interview, the patient suddenly displayed signs of distress due to some chest pain. Whilst my friend went to get a nurse (as the patient said she thought she had heartburn), I went into autopilot, doing a pain history just to make sure it was really heartburn. A small and insignificant event, you say? I agree as well, but I think that helped me remember the whole point of being a medical student; in the midst of the studying, the shrieks of disgust when viewing rather horrendous skin diseases, the procrastination and the enthusiasm of discovering new differential diagnoses, I often forget the "medical" part, and I just feel like a uni student, studying to get good grades, to pass and hopefully do honours. Stuff like this makes me feel more relevant when talking or doing exams on patients, and less like a really useless accessory walking around the wards with nothing to contribute.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Die, Procrastination, Die

*swish* *slash* I stand valiantly as I parry and thrust my sword against a formidable, though familiar foe; one with whom many of us know well and share a decidedly love-hate relationship with. The foe's name is Procrastination; and my sword will be self-control. Unfortunately, this sword has been broken and splintered numerous times in the past, and when in one piece, has often proved to be a rather blunt object, bruising this thing that I face, whilst not entirely doing any real damage to it. So today, I've decided to sharpen this weapon with the promise that I shall only use the internet for recreational purposes on two selected days of the week, spaced out as Thursdays and Sundays. Why? Well, because they are optimal days in which less time goes by without me checking my inbox, which could be disastrous, if say, something was going to run next week and I had no knowledge of it. Sundays will cover any weekend communication in preparation for the week ahead, whilst Thursday will be the mid-week fix to make sure all is well and right in the outside world.

Shall this work, I will thus tame an animal which has hounded many before me who have been unable to rid it from their existence. This animal can never be vanquished completely; in fact, I think that a little Procrastination tends to make life more colourful and less monotonous. However, this wild beast tends to disrupt any long-term goals, and thus I think this endeavour is a worthy one which I will strive to succeed in.

This includes this blog, although I haven't been writing in this very often anyway, so this should be least affected. So, no real loss to you guys.

Well, I thought that this would be an interesting thing to document. I only wonder; will I in my later years, reflect upon this post with sadness and regret, or with fondness and appreciation (of my former self)? Only time will tell...

Friday, July 9, 2010

So, what did I learn...

Results for Semester 1 exams came out today, amid much anticipation, following the non-graded Y (which stands for 'Yes') grade I received previously, which meant that I would be continuing to next semester. This anticipation quickly turned into a more sombre emotion as I scrolled through my results and found that I failed half my exams - two out of four; one by less than half a percent, but a fail nonetheless. In UWS, you can only fail three exams in the entire year, even if your average score is over 50%, which I admit sounds fairly reasonable. But right now I think I'll need all of this leeway to get myself through this year and start clinicals.
I came into Year 2, Semester 1 with optimism; although previous years warned that this semester was difficult, I was, or so I thought, prepared for this difficulty; I saw it as simply a slightly larger obstacle to overcome. So naturally, I am sure I spent more time studying this semester than last year, and so expected a slightly better result than what faced me today. Thinking about this in a more rational manner, it is obvious that I must have underestimated the difficulty of the exams, overestimated my effort, and should have done a few things differently.

First, I can hardly blame the school for marking too hard, as the cohort statistics were published and, although, as an entire cohort, we slipped (a fair bit), my personal results slipped significantly further. This indicates that my result was personal and so must have reflected personal achievement.
Second, I didn't attend as many lectures as I did last year, and also paid less attention in labs and in PBLs. Anecdotes are given of hero students who cram in two weeks before exams and pull off Credits, but I'm of the opinion that these hero students could have been right at the top of their grade, had they bothered to put in the effort. And for a more average student like myself, not attending all the lectures really does make a difference. Something to correct for this semester. As an observation, overall attendance rates for lectures seemed to dip quite a bit this semester as well.
Third, I must find a more efficient way to study. I doubt this will come easily, but I think going back to handwriting may prove more effective, to reduce any distractions and to help retain memory.
Fourth, exam technique still applies in Medicine. I chalked my relative success in anatomy last year to online quizzes with photographic images and familiarisation with cavaders; yet for some reason, this semester I went back to learning straight off anatomy textbooks, which covers basics but isn't a good way to prepare for exams such as anatomy spot-tests; rapid-fire tests that you only succeed in when you are an expert in real-life anatomy. This probably traces back to studying earlier and more consistently, since I found myself still learning a couple of days before exams, which caused loss of quick recall of the anatomy learnt months ago, as well as inability to quickly recall the newly-crammed material due to a sense of overwhelming doom accompanying the names of hundreds of different structures.

This year, I'm still aiming for an overall Credit; which means I will most probably need to hit a Distinction average next semester. This nearly happened last year, but on reflection, I think I can do better without trying to suddenly become a hermit. Second semester starts in three days, and I'm actually quite excited to get back into it. Nothing beats crappy results better than a dose of optimism, a sprinkle of hindsight, a tablespoon of objectivity and a generous helping of get-back-into-it.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

A well-deserved break

Well, my exams have finished, so I'm back. And what a better way to welcome me back to Blogger than the announcement that I have 4 spam comments to be moderated! Such a comforting thought, to know that these people are bothering to attempt to spam this blog with advertisements for chinese webcam sites and whatnot. But anyway...
My mid-year semester examinations were comprised of four papers; a MEQ (Multiple-Mini Essay paper), SAQ (Short-answer), MCQ (Multiple-choice) and an Anatomy Spot Test (the second one so far, we had one in semester two, last year). Suffice to say, I believe that this time around, my marks compared to last years will be lower, despite putting more effort into studying; the role with the student union has actually made me more inspired to study harder, paradoxically. The exams were quite a mixed bag in my opinion; the MEQ and Spot Test were filled with things I managed to only gloss over in my study (although entirely my fault, an example of this was not covering Chronic Renal Failure enough whilst covering every other pathology of renal disease possible; and knowing in great detail the structure of bones for the spot test which was never utilised), but to balance things out, the SAQ and MCQ had quite familiar questions which were answerable. The MCQ was a special test to note, since we had two sessions that were essentially filled with practice MCQs that could come up; once again, the number of MCQs repeated from previous years was a significant number; to the extent that I would confident in saying I would expect no more than single-digit numbers of people failing that exam. Essentially, if you were to memorise all the practice MCQs given out, and guessed the remainder, then assuming you have a 1 in 4 chance of getting those guessed questions right, you would be very, very, very close to passing.

I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing; in fact, I don't think failing future doctors on whether they can recall every detail of a cellular mechanism so they can find the answer that is INCORRECT, is essential, in this stage. Yes, doctors are responsible for people's lives, but at this stage, we're still medical students in pre-clinical years, and performances in OSCEs and the results of clinical years are more important. Regardless, it is one exam and shouldn't make much of a difference in the overall scheme of things.

Post-exam period mood: Nonchalant. Once again, the post-exam feeling of "I feel like I should be studying but I don't have to" has settled, and I'm inclined to start studying for next semester, although I feel like I may want to wrap up last semester with a nice concise book of notes. These holidays are going to be a bit different from the last ones though - now that there aren't any exams, it's full throttle to student union and general university affairs, as well as more personal ones like preparing to take my P's test (provisional driving license - i.e. license to drive unsupervised, for all those non-Australian/non-NSWers reading) and finishing Big Bang Theory. Also on the agenda is sleeping more, eating more, and exercising more; very important things that I didn't get as much of as I would've liked to during the exam period... speaking of which, a siesta sounds mighty alluring right now. Time to nod off..

Sunday, May 16, 2010

This is shaping up to be an interesting year.

As an update on the UWS student union elections, I was voted in as the Campbelltown Chair for the 2010-11 period. I think this year will be very interesting; both on campus and personally, as I figure out how to balance studying for medicine and aiming for at least a Credit (I want to do Honours, not for the additional letters on the end of my degree, but rather the experience; I don't really mind not being awarded an Honours afterward if I don't meet the 5.5 GPA requirement), whilst doing my best involving myself with student life and organising activities on campus. I often wonder at how students like Ross Roberts-Thomson (AMSA president) manage to balance their own learning process and such a huge responsibility like that position; in a sense, I hope this chair position for me will teach me time management skills, as well as prioritisation and drifting away from procrastination.

Speaking of which, I've found recently that my interest in computer games has dropped, compared to last year. It's something about the countless hours essentially wasted on a game that really got to me, as I realise the importance of other activities. In my view, even movies seem more of a worthwhile time-waster than games, with an opportunity to discover something new, something hopefully thought-provoking. Issues like religion and politics are starting to take huge chunks of my dedicated 'wind back and relax' time (no, I'm not insane, for me these are genuinely relaxing topics), and I'm finding that it's helping me mould my views on the world, hopefully for the better.

I'm toying with the idea of moving on campus next year and going to Campbelltown Hospital; the idea of moving away for a while and learning essential life skills (I know the basics of ironing, but it still takes me 10 minutes to iron a shirt well) is attractive to me; unfortunately, the cost of obtaining said lessons is not so. Moving onto residence may help me continue to be involved in campus life next year as well, even if not as a chair. Oh, so many thoughts, so little time.

In the meantime, whilst my mind is rattling off somewhere in the great beyond of next year (my mind tends to do this at most inopportune times; I have an amusing navigating story that I shall unravel later), exams are only 3 weeks and 5 days away. This has been the busiest semester so far, and once again, it will be interesting for me to see how much I can learn, re-learn and summarise in this relatively short time. Since there are still PBLs going on, my study would most probably be hopping around between renal and neuro, in addition to completing my part of a group EBM (Evidence-Based Medicine) assignment and finishing my week's PBL notes for my group to use as study material.

Should get off Blogger and start studying, shouldn't I?

Monday, April 12, 2010

Life is moving at a fast pace...

As we reach the half-way point of the first semester of year two, I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed by the amount of effort required to do well in Medicine. I know that the upcoming years will be tougher than this year, with a full-time 9-5, 5 days a week attachment and intense Conference weeks filled with lectures, I can't help but feel a bit apprehensive that if I'm lagging behind now, I will be lagging behind in future years. In the space of eight rather short weeks (in my opinion, they flew by pretty fast), we have covered both renal and musculoskeletal systems. At the moment, my knowledge on musculoskeletal is close to nil, and I'm brushing up on my renal block now; and to help things, we just started neurology. I guess it's just a tiny worry, but it's a worry nonetheless, and I guess I've just got to keep at it. Good thing I'm finding all of this interesting (well, maybe not the renal), but still, it's a heck of a lot to keep track of - indeed, I didn't expect musculoskeletal being only three weeks in length; there's so many tendons, muscles, parts of the bone and functions of the whole system to learn! I'm glad we have mid-sem breaks not combined with Easter (that gives us, effectively, an extra day), and we don't have any mid-sem exams (definitely felt good last week walking around the university and seeing everyone heads-down).

I think that me and my mates playing Starcraft at every break is hardly helping the issue either. Or that we now have a Starcraft club. Oh what have I got into...

Monday, April 5, 2010

The University Experience

I'm not quite sure whether this is the phenomenon in other universities, but for us at UWS, our cohort in medicine tends to be pretty friendly but also insular and exclusive to our own cohort. This may be due to various factors, such as different starting dates of our course versus other courses in the university; the geographical proximity of the rest of the university from our building; the self-sufficience of our totally awesome building; or simply that we can't really be bothered extending ourselves socially to the rest of the university when we seem to have no reason to (after all, having 400+ potential friends to meet and greet is quite enough). Thinking about how 'student life' is promoted so heavily as a strong point by my friends who attend other universities, I can't help but see that my own personal view of UWS as a university without much 'student life' could simply be due to my own indifferent attitude to involving myself in it, and thus, having no idea as to what could be either offered, or initiated. As a comparatively young university, with a comparatively young student union (after the last one went insolvent...), I see the 'lack' of student life as an opportunity to innovate, to be involved, and to improve this ourselves. The pre-clinical years of our course are hardly contact-hours heavy, so we do have some time to pursue this. Our own UWS Medicine Society is, in my opinion, brilliantly run, with a dedicated Executive and other involved students who are really keen on enriching the extracurricula experience of university; this does not line up with what is happening at the moment. This is why I think that the upcoming student union elections at the end of April will be an important turning point. I've joined a very keen and energetic team of students who call ourselves 'Action!' - an initiative to turn this around. Med students can exert an enormous effect on the university, simply by voting in the elections - getting the most enthusiastic and innovative students into the union, allowing them to change the blase attitude held by those in office now, and to think and act for the benefit of the students.

My friends that attend those other universities joined endless strings of clubs on O-Week. They did not bother to follow this up; and considering their circle of friends are still the same, I struggle to see how they could boast about student life. Taking action and being involved will do far more than sitting on the laurels of those coming before them.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

SSRS from a good friend of mine...

So, here follows a report from one of my friends (yes, I did get their express permission!) for their involvement in the SSRS program.

"The aim of the study is to determine the impact of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) on chronic cough in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). This is a single-blind, randomized, controlled and parallel group study of the effect of nasal CPAP on cough in patients with proven OSA and cough. Patients are recruited prior to their commencement of CPAP treatment and are allocated to either treatment group (CPAP with treatment pressure) or control group (CPAP with sham pressure). Cough data is collected 4 times during the study: at baseline, 1 week review, 1 month review and 2 month review respectively. This is achieved by using the 24 hours Ambulatory Cough Monitor and patients’ self assessment through completing the Leicester cough questionnaire. At the conclusion of the study cough results will be compared between the two groups to determine the effect of nasal CPAP on cough parameters including frequency, sensitivity, threshold and Quality of life in patients with proven OSA and chronic cough.

My main involvement and responsibility in this project was patient recruitment in the Concord and Liverpool hospital sleep lab. This involves presentation of the project, communication, negotiation with patient and answering patient queries. Relationship building and maintenance with Concord and Liverpool sleep lab staff was important, as frequent liaison with sleep lab scientific officers was required to follow up patient reports. My other responsibilities include data entry and maintenance of patient information in excel spreadsheet, as well as delivery and pick up of the cough monitor at the patient’s preferred time and location.

This project gave me an opportunity to gain a basic understanding of the clinical research process, the complexity in its set up and the difficulties that the researcher may encounter. A better understanding of sleep apnoea in the clinical setting was also attained. Patient recruitment was a challenge however it helped to improve my communication, presentation and negotiation skills in the process. Managing different aspect of this project helped me to further develop my organization skills."

Friday, February 19, 2010

Life is rosy...

My first week as a second-year ended quite well; but before I get to the end, I probably should take it from the top. First of all, it's always nice to see everyone back; many of them I have not met during the holidays for whatever reason (I would like to blame my research project, but in reality it didn't prevent me from doing much... thanks, awesome holidays-are-meant-to-be-holidays supervisor!*) This week was meant to be a "get right into it" week, but most of the lectures were short, or introductory/welcome lectures; so it seemed a really relaxed week overall. However, the attitude towards study certainly seemed to have shifted in our grade; noticed a bit more of a studious attitude, not just in myself but of those around me - and this was the first week back as well! On the flip side of seeing everyone back was the not-so-joyous realisation of how our cohort had changed a little; some good friends of mine weren't around, and some I knew suddenly appeared in our cohort's lists for practical classes and tutorial groups. I think that as a grade, however, we pulled through first year quite well, which was quite heartening. Our first anatomy tutorial went quite well, and even included a little radiology session, which we haven't had before; getting a kidney via ultrasound hurts a tiny bit though.

Which brings me to our system of study for our first few weeks; the renal system. Not exactly what I would vote as 'most stimulating subject of study'; I think I will struggle to keep focused on my studies for renal. I remember meeting one of my friends from high school who I hadn't spoken to in a year, and asking him: "how do you study stuff you're not interested in?"; and he answered "well, I just force myself... I persuade myself that if I don't learn this properly, or read this much, then I won't get a nice job and get paid well, and life would be s**t." (He's doing Comm/Law... I'm not saying anything about Commerce or Law by inserting that piece of information in; I think it's a wonderful double degree that gets you places and does, by all means, lead to excellent job prospects if you have no passion for anything in particular that any university offers). Unfortunately for myself, I have not that faculty that allows me to delude myself; I have tried to settle for "my patients will die if I don't know this" which, funnily enough, doesn't get me anywhere, because then I think "well, I do have 4 more years of med school, and another couple of Olympics in ward experience to learn this, so just chillax right now."

That isn't the reason why life is rosy, however. Why life is rosy is because two very awesome things happened to me, today. One: I have an awesomely witty ICM tutor. and Two: I can cycle to hospital and not fall asleep during ICM/PCS (8km one way). Score.

* In relation to the SSRS, I may be getting a writeup of one my friend's experiences on this blog. So stay tuned for some objective recounts :) Also, I forgot to mention what PCS is - Procedural Skills; lessons on the more clinical side of medicine such as cannulation, injections and hooking up IV drips. That, actually, should be my third reason for why life is rosy.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

What an exciting time!

Congratulations to everyone who made it into medicine this year; specifically those coming to UWS - your combination of smarts, effort and good looks probably helped your odds ;) On a more serious note, commiserations to those who did not make it in yet. I always looked at entry into medicine as a when, not an if question; and this seems to be the correct attitude time and time again for those who continue to pursue their goal. The 'when' question could be answered as soon as in a few weeks time; late round offers are abound in medicine, with so many offers going to so many interstaters, as well as those who decide to move out of their home state, and those who decide that medicine is not for them anymore. There may be a few key questions that you would like to ask:

Q) What other options are there?
A) The first one to think about is graduate entry into medicine. This is not necessarily a bad thing; the whole process of finishing graduate entry could only take a year more than some undergraduate courses - in addition, it gives you an extra degree, and it gives you both time and the practical option to consider going into medicine - you may discover the career that makes your heart beat and your brain tick, or your passion for medicine may glow even brighter. The second one to think about is alternate pathways into medicine; UNSW has such a stream for Med Science students (not recommended if you want to do Med Science explicitly for that stream), UWS also has a stream via a B Science(Advanced). Details are in my first post. You may also want to consider taking a gap year - whilst some may consider it an utter waste of time, a gap year may give you time and space to think, perhaps concentrate on the UMAT if it was your hurdle, allow you to travel or to work full-time to save up money for possible admission to an interstate uni (if money is your hurdle). So, no, it's not the end of the world.

Q) I'm thinking of repeating Year 12 next year, since my HSC/Final year results was the one that let me down.
A) In theory, this may sound like a good idea, since you *only* sacrifice a year, and may well stand to do great, especially if you thought you didn't put enough effort. From my observations though, it would be infinitely better in practice to go to university. Science, Med Science, and allied health degrees all have a fair bit of overlap with medicine, especially in first year. In many universities, the difference between med science and medicine in first year is the rather cursory clinical experience. If you start university, you're not even sacrificing a year; you will have more options open to you, such as graduate entry (which you would only be two years away from if you completed a year of university, provided you do a 3-year degree), you are working towards a degree, you get to experience university life, and you get a taste of the style of study university requires. In addition, a year of a related degree would most probably help you in your medicine course when you get in; from a personal point of view, our strongest academic students generally already have university experience.

Q) I should give up, I wasn't meant to do medicine anyway.
A) That's what I felt like when main round came and I didn't make it. This may give you a chance to reassess your own motives for doing medicine, and whether they are enough to make you want to keep going for it. As many would say, getting into the course is the hardest part of medicine. Also, if you hadn't applied for interstate universities or investigated many alternate options (including not applying for universities inside your own state...and yes that happens), you should look into them now and apply for them next year.

Now, possible questions that first years may want to know about! Most and many, are and have been answered numerous times in the forum Med Students Online, but I guess I'll dish out my own personal point of view:

Q) Should I buy textbooks/stethoscope/sphygmomanometer/tendon hammer/penlight/labcoat/etcetcetc now?
A) This depends on your university - generally though, there isn't much of a reason to get things early. There seems to be very low competition amongst medical suppliers, so as a result, sales are often rare and may not really represent great value at all. Also, allowing yourself to attend university for the first few weeks will help you in your textbook-buying decision making, since you start to see which textbooks are favoured by professors. You also get a chance to trial run textbooks if you use the uni library. I have a post on buying cheap textbooks if you're short of cash, use the tags on the side of this blog to find it. There are some textbooks that seem to be the standard for pretty much all universities though, so buying them early (say, if you were leaving soon to go to another country) probably wouldn't hurt - Talley and O'Connor's Clinical Examinations, Gray's Anatomy for Students, Guyton's Medical Physiology seem to be fairly standard texts, especially the first one. For steths, a Littmann at the $100 mark will be suffice for med school and even beyond; if you want, there are more pricey scopes around. Almost everything else can wait; in fact, stethoscopes can wait for a while too, especially if your university isn't very heavily focused on the clinical side in first year. For UWS students, your first semester's clinical experience consists of history taking, which does not require anything other than your brain and your mouth (although it would probably be best if you had a body).

Q) Can I start studying?
A) Yes you can; whether you should, I would say, emphatically, no. Cmon, enjoy your break! You just made it into med! You are awesome and study is not awesome - awesome and not awesome don't mix, so don't study!

Q) But I really want to!
A) Umm...ok. In that case, you start reading Wikipedia (read anything medical related I guess?). Get used to using it; even if you hate it, chances are you will eventually search up wikipedia when you get stuck on something. Wikipedia is a great place to collect random tidbits of knowledge, so go ahead and be a study nerd!

Q) Are grades important in medical school?
A) Grades for the sake of grades, I would say, are unimportant. However, depending on your uni, and whether you got a scholarship, it may well be very important for you (if you want to do Honours, or have to maintain a scholarship, for example). Personally, I think grades are also important as kind of a guideline as to how much you're learning (maybe not the best, but still). If you're aiming for a pass, and a pass only, chances are that you'll end up not doing very much study at all. And in courses where the contact hours can be quite low (such as UWS, maybe other universities as well), that frame of mind can set you quite close onto the road to failing. They do not, however, carry much weight directly after university though - otherwise universities which implement a pass/fail grading system would disadvantage their high achievers, and I can't see that happening.

Q) How much work should I be expecting to do?
A) In first year, to be honest, not a lot. When relatives/friends ask you the cursory questions, and then ask "So, is med hard?", you will probably disappoint them. You could probably easily get by with an hour or two a day, and some solid study in the time leading up to exams. If you've done a year of related university work prior, it may be even better. So, put on your party hats and expect to get inducted hard-style into university life ;)

Ok, so, t-t-t-t-that's all, folks!

Thursday, January 14, 2010

A finger in all the pies...

So as I'm beginning to reach the end of my student summer research scholarship (SSRS), with about 3 weeks remaining, it appears that the most of my time has actually not been dedicated to a single project, but rather to a variety of projects running at the same time, by different researchers, in the same laboratories. It's been a great learning experience in terms of what is happening at the university's labs, and was not only observational but also included some hands-on experience such as the preparation of a salt solution, miniaturisation of pipette diameters, and taking part in experiments both as subjects and being involved in the running of them. The one thing that I want to see before I finish up is what actually happens when there are no SSRS students around, and I've yet to see the boring side of research - except the rather long waits during experiments when either waiting for something to happen, or trying to find a nerve and patiently moving around a recording needle in the vicinity of that aforementioned nerve. Ok, which can get a bit tedious. I've remarked to my supervisor that it seems the interesting side of research is presented in the scholarship, and he agreed; which is fair enough, and great for the students on this scholarship :)

As an aside, I've started to at least try to prepare for this upcoming semester's work. Promises of a long hard grind for this year have shaken me to start studying near the end of the holidays - a good thing or a bad thing, I am not sure. Surprisingly though, I've found that I've gone out with my friends a lot more than during the break between high school and university, despite the SSRS. It's great to catch up with high school friends after a few months; it does make me miss them. Although I do not miss the hidden pencil case/calculator/bottle/bag/anything that belongs to me. Or the 'friendly' punches.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Happy New Year!

So, with the start of a new year, there begins fresh aspirations, old wishes and another chance to do something interesting with the life you live. For me, this meant a new list of resolutions (I am proud to say that almost half of my resolutions for 2009 were met), which included some old ones (the ones from 2009 that weren't met), and, as for the something interesting...well...I went back to research today.
Yes, it is January 4th, the first Monday of the new year and I already logged a day at the labs, albeit another relaxed one. I have a feeling my progress in terms of attendance would be severely hindered though, thanks to two events: 1) Cityrail trackwork...on WEEKDAYS! Forcing me to take a train to the city, before coming down to Macarthur; and thus lengthening the travel time to a hint under two hours... and 2) Ramp trackwork. There is a single ramp connecting the station to the UWS campus; the alternative is walking around the other side to the shopping centre, across a large bridge and into the other entrance of our uni. Methinks a car would solve this, but alas, still, I am more than three score hours away from that lofty 120 hour L's requirement...
So, these two will continue for the next two weeks, and I hope I won't have to travel too many times to the campus. Else, I will be trying my best to pass off driving to uni with my dad as 'L's driving practise'.

Edit: Well, it's actually the 5th now. Dang it, failed blog post.