SSC and OSCE

Next week is the final week of my SSC module. I'm doing my SSC on rheumatology and the deadline of submission for the case study is next week!

Here's an insight of how the specialty like - being a rheumatologist, your work comprised of clinics (about 3 times a week), ward rounds (seeing only about 3 patients at most) and mostly research and meetings. Plus, the only invasive procedure that you will perform on a patient is injecting steroids or other anti-rheumatic drugs for people who have joint problems. That's all!

People might say that the training to be a specialist in rheumatology would be difficult and demanding, but if you would like only a 9 to 5 job in a medical setting, not to mention the huge amount of pay when you're a consultant, this specialty is one of your best shots!

Some people might argue back to me that it is a boring specialty. Well, it entirely depends on you really. If you want to be a surgeon and working continuously from 8 am till 9 pm (depends on the complication of the surgery) for the rest of your medical career, and on top of that, conducting a really busy clinic the next day, then be my guest. No one is going to stop you. It's the interest that is of importance in choosing your career pathway.

And after the SSC has finished, it's OSCE come dawning at me. I will be having my OSCE on the 24th February, which means I have approximately 2 weeks to prepare. For those of you guys who do not know what OSCE is, it actually stands for Objective Structured Clinical Exams. In other words, it's actually a practical exam which will test the clinical skills that I have learned in hospital. It consists of various tasks such as physical examination, drugs prescription, consultation and even breaking bad news.

In essence, in the next 2 weeks, I'll have to finish writing up my SSC and then keep practice for my OSCE. So, yeah, it' s gonna be a whole lot practice and revision to do for me in the next two weeks!

Egypt & Exams

I have definitely lost my momentum to continue with my studies and resume my routine bus trip to and from Wythenshawe Hospital after the holidays. Don't get me wrong. I still love medicine. It's just that, as an average student, being lazy and doing everything half-heartedly after a long holiday is just normal, I guess. Anyhow, I keep telling myself that I will surely get over this lazy attitude and gain back my momentum after the first week of school (hopefully).

Oh yeah! About my egypt trip. The trip to egypt was awesome! The weather was great, the foods were delicious, and the company was cool! Honestly, the experience that I had in Egypt has exceeded beyond my expectations. I thought it was gonna be a normal and a little bit dull trip. The only reason that I agree to join was that I am going there with my bestest buddies - Ili, Yas & Mayura. But, I have to admit, I was proved wrong by everything that I have gone through. Some of the highlights of the trip include the enourmous pyramids, breath-taking scenery at the beaches and definitely the 'shoe tragedy' at the peak of Mount Sinai.

After 8 days of exhilaration and fun in Egypt, with a heavy heart, we departed back home to Manchester and had to snap back to reality and slam our face back into our books! And of course that include FaceBOOK! :D

Memories in Egypt with my bestest friends and humouros guide will embed forever in my memory.

Being Proactive!

I just had my very first meeting with my academic advisor today. It was just a get-to-know session between us and her and she did ask about how's everything going on in our firm and wards.

As soon as she posed that question to us, I had expected that all of my groupmates will voice out their unsatisfactoriness towards the teaching from our consultant. Let me just name him as Dr. X to keep his identity anonymous for obvious reasons.

Basically, we had a limited amount of proper teaching from our consultant. He is always occupied with his work and we rarely had the time to meet him in the ward. Undoubtedly, being a cardiologist is a hectic work but he should bear in mind that he also has the responsibility on our teaching. Even if he really do not have the time to meet and teach us, he should assign any registrars, SHOs, or FYs under him to teach us. Plus, his clinic is conducted at the same time as our PBL session. Therefore, we never had the chance to be in the cardiology clinic even though we are about to swap firms!

I felt jealous when I heard some other groups bragging about the proper teaching that they had in their firms with their consultants. They would always compare with each other what kind of skills, examinations and procedure that they have done. For instance, a guy would say they have performed a venepuncture on a patient. Then, there would be a girl claiming that she had done an ABG. And the list continues on and on. It seems to me as if all of this is some kind of a huge competition!

Going back to the meeting that I had with my academic advisor, she told us to be more proactive in gaining our teaching. Well, that was what we actually did for the past 6 weeks! All of the teaching in the wards that we had was like a ad hoc session. We would turn up and grab any consultants or doctors in sight to teach us something related to our case for that week.

When we get ourselves to the wards, we would always meet the nurses first and ask them if there are any patients that we could talk to and practice our history-taking on them. In terms of skills teaching, we could say that we lack a bit on that part because all the doctors in our ward rarely had a huge time to go through all the examinations that we did on the patients. Luckily, we have a clinical debrief session once a week to compensate on that! And of course, there would be certain time which all the doctors are really busy and they do not even have time to teach us and turn down our request.

In all, we have been very proactive in getting our teaching since we started our placement in the cardiology ward. We would always try to get our hands on every single teaching opportunity that is available. If not, how would we have even survived the past few weeks!

Life In Clinical Years

I keep delaying and telling myself to write something in this blog some time later which ended up I didn't post any entry for the past few weeks. Right now, I am pulling all of my strength and energy around me to write an entry after I left this blog unattended for a while.

As most of you guys might have already know, I have just started my clinical years in Wythenshawe Hospital and I'm gonna spend my time here till I graduate. The hospital is actually located quite far from my house, near the Manchester Airport, which kinda force me to wake up very early in the morning to commute. Basically, my daily timetable has totally changed vastly now. Everyday, I wake up at 6 am, get ready, and leave my house at 7.30 am and reach my hospital at 8.30 am everyday. That's quite an early time for some people to get out of bed, huh?

And when it comes to clinical years, all of my schedule are really packed with all sorts of clinical teaching such as ward rounds, skills teaching, clinical debrief and ward works. Most of the days, I will always get home at about 6 pm and feels extremely exhausted. Don't know if it's the journey to and from the hospital that takes out most of my energy but when you have a hectic schedule, it is unlikely you will end up not feeling worn out.

I could still remember a senior told me to appreciate and cherish the free times that I had when I was in first and second years because clinical years gonna is not gonna treat you well. I guess there are right and now I am starting to feel the tense!

The main entrance for Wythenshawe Hospital

In all, I think that the very early start schedule everyday is to get me used to the real life as a doctor. Once, an FY2 doctor told me that his work starts at 8 am and finishes at 6 pm everyday. Guess my schedule was not that bad and it could be worst. Otherwise, I am grateful with my life and will always try to lead an active life of a medical student. Peace out!

My New Sacred Resting Place

To divert my mind from thinking any other issues, I have decided to write about my newly-renovated room.

I have arrived in Manchester for about 5 days ago and really don't have much anything to do. The main thing on my mind was that I need to settle down and had a long to-do-list to prepare myself for the new academic term. And the first thing on that list was renovating my room. For me, it's important to have a neat, tidy, clean and comfortable room as it is the place where you would study, do your work and get a good night rest. It is the best sanctuary in your home.

Before this, I admit that my room looks kinda boring and dull. I don't have much stuff for decoration and the lighting in the room was not that good. The only source of bright light in my room was my desk lamp and it shines much brighter than the ceiling lamp. Thus, I brought my own light bulb from home to solve this issue. It's a Philip, an electronic brand that you can trust, and use 18 Watts to shine. Trust me, my room now looks more clearer and I could see any dust or clutter on the floor with this kind of light.

Then, it's the duvet cover and pillowcases. Since my bed is a double-sized bed, it is undoubtedly the main attraction in my room. People would surely have a look at my bed first before scrutinizing everything else. Before this, I have used a bright red silk duvet cover and pillowcases which didn't work out very well. Now, I decided to change all of that and replace it with a more 'metro' kind of style. Look at the pictures below!

The furniture arrangements in my room also needs a change to instill a new environment in this room. The new arrangements made my room looks a little bit smaller than before. But, I think the new available space would suffice for me to pray or do some indoor exercises. That's good enough for me. Let's just hope that there won't be additional furniture in my room later on.

Have a look at the pictures below and you can imagine how comfortable and neat my new rooms is! :)

View from entrance

My stuff

Look at how bright my room is now!

p/s: There is more to come. Some finishing touches still need to be done. :)

The Sense Of Dinar And Dirhams

I felt intrigued after reading a news article a few days ago about the Kelantan State Government introduced a new currency only for its state called Dinar and Dirham. Each dinar is worth RM180 and one dirham is RM4.

Whichever way you look at it, the fact remains that the opposition party of the Malaysian government has introduced a new system of currency. This new currency is really interesting as the last time an Islamic country used this syariah currency was the Ottoman Caliphate, dated back about more than 100 years ago.

The dinar and dirham are said can be used in more than 1000 shops in Kelantan and are accepted to be used to pay zakat and dowry.

As expected, Bank Negara Malaysia issued a statement, claiming only Ringgit Malaysia is the legal tender in this country.

Then, the Kelantan state governement said that their administrative staff will be paid in this new currency. Problem would certainly rise later on because if the staff were to spend outside the state, they need to change their money first which I would think most (possibly all) money changers would not accept as it is not an official currency of a country.

Some might see this act has something to do with politics and I do not doubt that. Maybe PAS also wants to create a sense of belonging to the Kelantanese and to show the world that they are serious in upholding the Islamic most prestigious currency.

The Kelantan Dirham

In terms of practical reasons, how much of the currency of one state can be minted and circulated widely? Lets just wait and see what happens next!

I'm Not A Superstar

My brother just showed me a video clip of a song, made by an Indonesian group called Project Pop. I'm not sure whether this group is famous or not in Indonesia as this is the first time I've heard of their name, but by the looks of number of views for this video, it is really promising. I know I'm maybe a little bit behind in publicising this video because my brother told me that this video has been popularly known since few months back. What the heck!

What attracted me the most about this video is the way they imitates top superstars of Indonesia in a much candid and funny way. Watching them copying the style and habits of Ariel Peterpan (currently known as Peterporn due to his involvement in a sex video), Glenn Fredly and Mulan Jamilah in this video is simply hilarious! You guys really have to watch it! Enjoy!