/m1, s1/
Clinical postings made me get acquainted with balls and broken hearts…crazy, I know.
I started my clinical postings right after Easter this year. I was actually excited for it although I didn’t know what to really expect.
For those that need context:
- I’m a Medicine student… if you couldn’t tell already.
- In our schedule, there’s nothing like semesters. We just have different postings.
- For those in 400 level like me, there are two types of postings: block posting and clinical posting.
- Block posting is basically normal classes and practicals. The two courses we do are Pathology and Pharmacology (studying the basis of diseases and how drugs and other things can interact with the diseased body, basically)
- Clinical postings is less of classes (Medicine and Surgery are the courses so we basically learn about common conditions and basic principles in the two disciplines) and more of learning how to be a doctor in the practical sense (so we go to the wards and clinics to watch and learn)
- In clinical postings, they divide us into groups and post us in different units under different departments eg Unit 3 in Urology department (Surgery), Unit 2 in Cardiology department (Medicine).
Phew, now that’s out of the way, I’ll carry on.
/urology 3/
My first posting was in Surgery. I was put in Urology 3 with my class rep and 2 other guys. I definitely wasn’t prepared to see a lot of male genitalia but boy, I had to adjust to it quickly. The first day was at the clinic where the consultant doctor was attending to patients. I witnessed a DRE for the first time and it was kinda interesting to see (it means Digital Rectal Examination… they examine the rectum and related organs with a finger basically). My class rep was horrified by it which I found quite amusing. Even when one of the doctors (I think it was the Senior Registrar, “SR” as we call them) was examining the scrotum of a middle-aged man with ED (no, not eating disorder… Erectile Dysfunction), he felt weird on my behalf. In his mind, I was supposed to be freaked out or at the very least, uncomfortable seeing that. I wasn’t bothered by it honestly; it’s very different when it’s in a sexual context (regardless of the case scenario).
It didn’t take long for me to become really interested in Urology. The doctors were really willing to teach us about the basics of clerking patients (when we ask them questions about their complaints in order to get clues about what the disease or condition actually is), common symptoms seen in Urology (frequent urination, blood in urine, urinary retention, issues with erection etc) and how to apply the pathology we learn in getting a diagnosis for a patient. They didn’t even insult us for not knowing stuff — occasionally, the Senior Consultant (“conso”) would but it was always light-hearted.
My favourite part was definitely being in the theatre with the doctors, observing the way they operated on patients while taking notes from their discussion. The consultant (both Senior and Junior) would ask the SR and the registrars questions related to their field so I’d pen down whatever I heard as long as I could figure out the spelling. I was basically the secretary of the group back then.
When it was time for us to leave the unit, I was actually sad. I knew Medicine wouldn’t stimulate my brain as much as Surgery did. I knew I’d spend more time clerking patients in the wards or even the clinics because there aren’t surgeries for us to watch and learn from.
/cardio 2/
When I found out that I was put in Cardiology 2, I asked people that were in any of the Cardiology units how it was for them. Their responses gave me hope that I would learn a lot while there. Little did I know that my experience would be very far from that.
The doctors in this unit were different from my previous unit. They were more invested in their patients than the students put there to learn from them. Now don’t get me wrong, of course their patients will be their priority (especially since most of them have faulty hearts due to chronic conditions like cardiomyopathies and hypertension) but then, they didn’t even act like we were placed under them to learn. They didn’t carry us along that much, particularly the SRs. The consultants did make effort to explain things to us though. I remember learning about stroke and heart failure from them so I had no issue with them. The old House Officer (HO; kinda like an intern doctor) also explained the pathophysiology of breathlessness. Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one that was annoyed by the lack of attention. All my group members grew tired of them not making out time to put us through stuff or carry us along during ward rounds. Even the new HO isn’t having a good time in that unit. I was anticipating the end of clinical posting even though that meant going back to having classes from 8am to 4pm in the name of block posting.
Well, now clinical posting’s over after about 4 months of taking a few thousand steps every weekday. I’ll miss it to an extent… if my M1 (1st Medicine) posting didn’t make me feel feel like I wasted my white uniform on some days, I would miss it completely.
Oh well, let’s see what the 2nd clinical posting brings me (M2 and S2)… for now, let me juggle this 2nd block posting.
If I didn’t have to give so much context, this would’ve easily been labelled a 3-minute read by Medium lol. Anyways, at least this is out of my drafts now.
