Xiao's Blog

While many of my friends are enjoying the suns of Japan, the sands of the many South East Asian islands, the warmth of their real homes and birthplaces, the boredom serenity of the untouched New Zealand, my holiday thus far, was spent in the hospital, by choice.

I was asked to fill in some of the shifts, by the medical admin, whom I think, deserved more than the rostering troubles caused by all the doctors. The paycheck was decent, definitely not of nor above market rate, considering how desperate the situation was. The big plus, for me, was the opportunity to work a medical HMO2 job, with a registrar from AIfred.

We had quite a bit of fun working as the admitting team, stressful at times due to the volume of referrals from ED.

I found out she has passed her FRACP exam.

FRACP step 2. Whoah!

Her passion was in Cardiology. She would be starting a job in Cardiology at AIfred in the coming month. Whoah whoah!

That certainly cleared my doubt, this is not an opportunity that would come so often. I made a great choice! Medicine is always about “see one, do one, teach one.”

Despite the short stint, I believed I’ve made a very good impression and learned a lot in the process too.

• Picked up a spinal cord compression, missed by one of the ED registrars. He had the cheeks to tell me, in my face, that the MRI was negative. I had a proper look at the MRI report, was an incomplete scan. Even then I resisted retorting, for that’s no excuse for not doing his job properly. Referring a patient w/o proper workup. I found the neurological deficit incidentally, when I had no idea what was going on and proceeded to do examination of all the systems
• First code blue. First CPR on a patient. Definitely effective CPR, coz my shoulders ached for the whole of next day. Didn’t manage to save the patient though. My registrar was kind enough to assure me that I did nothing wrong. My workup had been excellent, at the very least.
• It’s always history, examination and then investigation. Don’t know what’s going on, go back to the basics.
• Medical school didn’t prepare the new doctors on how to work. Have to show the newbies a trick or two.

I am on my way to greatness!

Would be expecting an old friend to arrive in Melbourne tomorrow. It would be great fun

Arrivederci.

“The key to be the best, is first to be good. And to be good, you need nothing but hard work.”

-Xiao_zhai-

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Day-2-day.