Bila mata bertemu mata. mata student dan mata patient. hee

Alhamdulillah.
Emm..Thinking of sharing what I had today.



So today, alhamdulillah I get to pay my first visit to my second patient. A sweet, demure patient I would say. A local. 

My days begin early lately. Coz subuh prayer starts at around four. *gasp. yeah. it will get earlier and earlier as day passes during this spring.
and unlike Malaysia, the prayer times change a lot throughout the year. The good things about this are, we care more about prayer times and undeniably we tend to plan our days according to solat time. Allahuakbar. 

I (mostly) don't allow myself to stay up late at night anymore (hang stay up ka sebelum ni Miss? hewhew). Right after isya', it's bed time, people! Kalau tak, takut tak terbangun subuh. So that's one example how prayer times help us to plan our day. And also, this makes us alert and flexible.

So, by the time my taxi reach my patient's house, Ms J was already waiting for me at the door with smiling face. "This is a good sign!" I told myself. Indeed, she's really a sweet person. She offered me tea (the courtesy of a host, of course), and was friendly all the way. 

She keeps telling me about her family and how she loves them. She tells me that a family is not about restricting the members but about letting everyone living their own lives as freely yet knowing that somebody is there for us when we have problem. 

She favours the moment when her grandchildren called to tell their problem, 
she seemed to like the fact that her son needs her to decorate his house. 
She's in her 70s. She has a soft hearted person. This allows to me to reflect how the elderlies feel. I mean, I have my grandmothers in Malaysia. And I'm sure that they as human beings would also love the feeling of being needed. I don't like feeling useless. You don't like feeling useless as well, do you? So another way of making the elderlies happy is to show how we still need them. Now, this is making me homesick.....I miss my Wan Kerdau and Wan Rompin (my family names our wan according to the hometown location ;) )

I can still remember the moment when I ask my patient's age. When she says "I'm 78. I'll be 79 next week. Oh, I can't believe it. I'm almost 80". I love to see every expression on her face as she told me about her life, dari dia muda sampai tua. Life goes on very swift. That very person in front of me used to be a baby, that person used to be in her 20s, 30s, and so on. I mean, if she thinks that her 80 years of living passes-by very quickly, I feel even quicker with my brief 20 years. Time flies. 

Imam Al-Ghazali sendiri pernah kata perkara yang paling jauh daripada manusia adalah masa yang berlalu. 

Arr. tapi kita (rephrase lah jadi aku) selalu je tak sabar masa berlalu. Ish tak sabar nak tunggu weekend lah, tak sabar nak tunggu summer lah. Selalu je nak terbang meninggalkan masa. sedangkan masa yang berlalu tu lah yang mungkin aku kebulurkan kat akhirat nanti. waa. T T 

But anyway, banyak je nak tulis sebenarnya tapi masa tak mengizinkan. Harapnya adalah something yang bermanfaat kat sini. Nak ajak sesiapa yang baca ni supaya jadi orang yang reflective for everything that happen in our lives. 

so tak ada bnda yang berlaku secara sia-sia. pasti ada tarbiyah di situ.

Never regret, but reflect (bak kata housemateku)

Akhir kata, doakan diri ini kuat dan mati dalam Iman.
Firman Allah dalam Surah Ali-Imran

Sahih International

Who remember Allah while standing or sitting or [lying] on their sides and give thought to the creation of the heavens and the earth, [saying], "Our Lord, You did not create this aimlessly; exalted are You [above such a thing]; then protect us from the punishment of the Fire.

quran.com/3

wanna be a mr/mrs doctor? well, no one's stopping ya!

this is for my juniors (or dongsaeng as the koreans call (adiuh, nk jgak!) ) who intrested in taking medicine.

--my first point would be: hey, we share the same dreams!! :)

--okay, what u need to know is that there are not much of scholarship for medicine as to compare with engineering, acc, law, etc. so as soon as any related medical scholarship opened for application, grab it!

--right, i dunt know if this one should one should be mentioned but medicine and medical science are different. what u really want to go with if u want to be a dr is M-E-D-I-C-I-N-E.

--AS FOR SMKBSians, interview can be in two forms- individually or in group. kalu individual, dye akn byk tnye pasl diri awk, yr opinion and isu semasa. kalu grouping, i wud say 90% of it is about isu semasa. last year, mara pnye interview individually while jpa pnye wat groupy. kalu nk tnye pasl individual bleyh tnye saya, kalu nk tnye yg grouping boleh tanye kak erly (kat fb!) .

--anyway, for both type interview, u need to be organized- one of the point is make resume to sell youself! 

--and for any interview, you should do your h/W that are to equip yourself with general knowledge and plz know bout current issues around the nation and world. next, please know bout the place you wish to go for study (ranking, why u wanna go thre, how much mara has to pay for u (if its mara), does mara send student thre, prog persediaan katne and mcm2 lg la). and plz ambl taw espcially pasl medical issue.

--and please know what kind of scholarship you are applying for. different scholarship, diff policies. jpa u xpayah byr blek tp kene gov-bound brape tahun ntah (meaning kne keja ngan gov). kalu mara xde gov-bound lame2 tp kne byr blek (peratusan kne byr ikot kputusan kita- kalu successful sgt, myb kne byr 1% je). so ambil tahu sume ni.

--all the best. we all know you got plenty of time now. so this is the time to be prepared. please speak in english at home starting from today so that u wont sound like idiot in front of the interviewers. im not good myself but hey, practice makes perfect!

keputusan MARA .. we waited for the whole morning

we waited the whole morning for mara result. every phone call gave me adrenaline rush and bumps. at last, at 11am , this is what we got from the webpage.

ATAS SEBAB-SEBAB TERTENTU, KEPUTUSAN PENEMPATAN SKIM PELAJAR CEMERLANG (SPC) MARA UNTUK PROGRAM IJAZAH LUAR NEGARA (PILN) 2010 TIDAK DAPAT DIUMUMKAN PADA HARI INI (17 MEI 2010).

          p/s:thnx for the info and a reminder for myself  ......

SABAR ITU SEPARUH DARIPADA IMAN ;)

 ::::i want ireland, ireland, ireland::::

a doctor too many by Dr Hsu

HEY, EVERYONE..I GOT THIS ONE FAMOUS ARTICLE WHICH INTERESTS ME ..ITS BY DR HSU:: 

~It's much of a woe for medical students though ;( ~

a doctor too many by Dr Hsu

Malaysia, a country with about 26 million populations, boosts of 24 medical schools now.

Just a few years ago, the number was less than 10. In fact, when my eldest son entered medical school 10 years back, i could count medical schools with my fingers. Now even with my toes and my fingers, I could not do so. Some of the names are so new that I, as a doctor, do not even know they exist until I did some research for this article.

The list is below:

Public universities:

• University of Malaya, Faculty of Medicine

•Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Faculty of Medicine

• Universiti Sains Malaysia, School of Medical Sciences

• Universiti Putra Malaysia, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences

• Universiti Malaysia Sabah, School of Medicine

• Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences

• International Islamic University Malaysia, Kulliyyah of Medicine

• Universiti Teknologi MARA, Faculty of Medicine

• Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences

• Universiti Darul Iman,Faculty of Medicine

Private Universities and Colleges’

• UCSI University, Faculty of Medical Sciences – School of Medicine

• Monash University Malaysia, School of Medicine and Health Sciences

• International Medical University, Faculty of Medicine

• AIMST University, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences

• Allianze College Of Medical Sciences, Faculty Of Medicine

• Management and Science University, Faculty of Medicine

• Cyberjaya University College of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine

• Royal College of Medicine Perak, School of Medicine

• Melaka Manipal Medical College, School of Medicine

• Penang Medical College, School of Medicine

• MAHSA University College, Faculty Of Medicine

• Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia ( NuMED)

• Taylor’s University College, School of Medicine

• UTAR

These are the medical schools in Malaysia. These schools when fully functional will produce about 4000 doctors a year. There will be thousands more Malaysian doctors being produced overseas, since many Malaysians are studying medicine in UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Indonesia, Russia, Taiwan and even Ukraine. (Nana adds IRELAND  here! hee =) )

The sudden mushrooming of medical schools are apparently due to shortages of doctors in the public sectors. This is because most doctors in government service resign after their compulsory services and opt for the supposedly greener pasture in the private sector.

In most other countries, the logical thing to do to counter this brain drain of doctors to private sector is to find out why doctors are resigning from government service and then try to address the woes of the doctors , and hopefully keep them in service. I call this common logic.

The Malaysian solution , like in many other instances, does not take common logic into account but rather uses the sledgehammer approach. After all, we do have Malaysian logic which is different from common logic practiced in most other countries. For example, if we cannot have spacecraft of our own, we can still produce Astronauts by sending Malaysians into space hitchhiking on other countries’ spacecraft.

In most other countries, the common logic will be to try to improve the working conditions in public sector so that doctors will stay back. But Malaysian logic is sledgehammer logic, and is very different.

If the doctors do not want to stay in government service, then Malaysia shall flood the market with doctors, so goes the Malaysian logic. Never mind that setting up of medical schools and training doctors are expensive businesses. We have petroleum and huge amount of development funds. By building more buildings and buying expensive medical equipment to equip these medical schools, billions will have to be spent and of course, in the Malaysian context, everyone will be happy, down from the planners, the contractors, the parents and all others involved, since the perception is that projects in Malaysia inevitably will have some leakages and wastages and many people are very happy with these leakages and wastages. Never mind that we may have the hardware but we may not have enough qualified people to man these medical schools.

The Malaysian logic seems to be like this: If enough doctors are produced, the market will be saturated with doctors and thus doctors will have no where to go but to stay put in government service.

Well, the people may be clapping hands and rejoicing that with more doctors than are needed, medical costs will come down.

Unfortunately, things do not function like this in medical education. Experience in some countries tells us that some doctors in private practice , when faced with too few patients will charge higher and do more investigations, some of which may not be needed, so instead of medical cost going down , it will go up.

In any advanced nation, the setting of a medical school requires a lot of planning and not on ad hoc basis. Planning that must include where to source for experienced and qualified teachers, where to build new or source for existing teaching hospitals which are big enough for the placement of these medical students to do training. Planning such as facilities, equipments, classrooms, curriculum. In the west, it takes many years of planning for a medical school to be set up; whereas in Malaysia, we see more than 10 in the last 5 years.

In Malaysia, due to the sudden ‘exponential’ increase in medical schools, we have medical schools pinching staff from each other, even the mediocre ones, and with that number of qualified teachers only, it is unavoidable that many teachers may not have the experience and qualification to be medical lecturers.

The early birds (medical schools) are more fortunate. Their students are placed in bigger hospitals like the General Hospitals of Kuala Lumpur or Penang. Now, some of the medical schools just opened have to send their students to smaller district hospitals to do their training. The smaller hospitals are often manned by more junior doctors who are not qualified to be medical teachers, and these hospitals have only very basic facilities and equipment.

This is just the beginning of the problems. For a doctor, graduating from a medical school is the beginning of a life long journey, and the basic medical degree is more like a license to start to really learn how to manage and treat patients.

The most important year after a doctor graduated is the houseman-ship. If a doctor does not have proper houseman training, then he would face a lot of problems later on. He or she may know all the medical knowledge in the world (just for argument sake only since knowledge of medicine is so vast that no one can know everything), but without the proper houseman training, he or she will not get the hand-on experience so crucial and important to doctors. A doctor without proper houseman training is not unlike a person, who has played only racing in the arcade games, suddenly being asked to race in a real life race. He would not have the hands on experience to do well. A doctor without proper houseman training would be like a person given a license to kill and a disaster waiting to happen.

Now, with 4000 doctors being produced in a year, where do we find so many houseman positions for these young doctors? Even now, with some of the medical schools just starting and not yet producing doctors, and the number of doctors being produced is much less than the 4000 , the wards in some of the bigger hospitals are filled with so many housemen that in some wards, there are not enough patients for these housemen to learn management skills. About a year back, I was told, in HKL some of the units have more than 20 housemen. Recently one doctor told me that in some units, it may have even more than that. I was aghast. Since with that many housemen in a single unit, and so few senior officers to guide them and so few patients for them to learn from, how are they going to learn the skill of doctoring?

When there is not enough training for these housemen, what do you think our policy planners do? In the typical Malaysian style, they increase the length of houseman-ship from a year to 2, hoping that the longer time will help to give better exposure to these doctors. Compared to Australia, New Zealand, and United Kingdom, houseman-ship is still one year only. By increasing the length of the houseman-ship, it is a tacit admission that our one year houseman training is not as good as the above mentioned countries. A poorly trained houseman will become a not so good medical officer, and since now most of the specialists are trained internally, it will be a matter of time that future specialists may not be as well trained as present.

Many parents do not know about the actual situation and still encourage their children to take up medicine. They are not told of the actual situation. The day will come when there are simply so many doctors that none are adequately trained. There will come a day when a doctor graduating from a medical school cannot even be placed in a houseman position.

That day is actually very near.

-THE END-

you should go to Dr Hsu page for the responses....highly recommended!  AND TAKE A LOOK AT THE INSTANT CAMERA BELOW! I LIKE IT! <SHARING IS CARING>