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8 june 2022
Shalom,
We wish you a happy Global Running Day on 1 June 2022 and World Environment Day on 5 June 2022.
We have been traveling here and there for the past four decades but the pandemic of 2019 grounded us at home for more than 2 long years. With international borders opening up slowly but surely, we am now ready to FLY once again!
Snippets from Memoirs of a Doctor:
A houseman in Internal Medicine
Going from one patient to the next until the last one may take a couple of hours, depending on the complexities of each patient. After that, I had to clerk all the new cases admitted via the outpatient department or the accident and emergency department. My job was to take a full history, do a physical examination, and document these onto the case notes.
The medical officer would come by later to check on each case and order the appropriate investigations and recommend the plan of management. Then it was back to clerking new cases, doing ward procedures, reviewing test reports, and so forth until 5 pm or later before passing the reins over to the next houseman on call.
The highlight of my stint in Medicine was the weekly Professorial grand teaching ward round. My Professor will come in at 9 am with the medical officer, and my job was to present every case to her from head to toe. The ward round usually took a long time to complete because the Professor was very long-winded with her teaching. She frequently sidetracked by telling us other unrelated stories, but no one dared to interrupt her!
By lunchtime, we would have covered possibly 8 or 10 patients at the most and there were so many more to cover! The team adjourned for a quick lunch break and resumed the grand rounds until 3 or 4 pm. After this, I was back to clerking new cases and reviewing reports. By this time there would be a backlog of cases to clerk and my day would end very late!
One day, a very prominent and famous radio Disc Jockey was admitted into ward 13. She used to come on air every night on national radio from 11 pm until midnight with her selection of sentimental songs.
She was a client and a good friend of my Professor and I had to give her special treatment. Her voice was so sweet and soothing. Listening to her speak in person was just like listening to her on national radio every night.
The housemanship provided me with hands-on experience, learning through apprenticeship, supervision, and bedside teaching. The medical officer was my mentor and I tagged along with him as close as I could without encroaching too much onto his personal space. Now was the time to put into practice all that I had learned in the last 5 years of medical school.
I could be diligent and learn as much as possible or choose to be slipshod and just do the bare minimum. It was entirely up to me and I chose the former route.
I got on very well with the nursing sisters, building up a good relationship with them over time. I learned a lot from them as some of them had been in their profession for decades. I also learned a lot from the medical officer, lecturer, and Professor.
Here is the link to the book, Memoirs of a Doctor
A word of thanks to our esteemed reviewers:
We thank and acknowledge the following amazing reviewers for their wonderful contributions:
Dr. Pamela-Anne Reinert, Rowan E. Creech, Jerry Walch, Debra Schwitzer, Valentina, Dr. Robert Leong, Dato' K R A Naidu, Archbishop Ng Moon Hing, Rev. Ng Wah Lok, Brother Jason Fong, Pastor J Tan, Pastor D S J Benjamin, Dr. Wong Che Hoa, Carol Chow, Esther Tan, Dr. Kevin, Daniel Wong, Steven Heoe, J S S Solomon, Lim Seng Choon, Albert Cherk, Christina Chan, Dr. Olivia Lee, David Lim Koo Hing, Sharmani Jayaram, Hilary Walker, Jan Paessler, and many others.
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