First Day Of School

Rise n shine... it was 8 am n i gotto drag myself outta bed... still wif e sores from the xiong weekend i had! and finally it's not 31 degrees anymore!!! heng ah! coz i'll be wearing a long sleeve shirt in the hosp (din bring much short sleeves)...

Kinda scared n edgy coz din know what it would be like at the wards here... heard australian students tend to be very vocal whereas i'm pretty satisfied standing round the corner n watching what they do really... met up wif my supervisor, Dr Paul Gow... really charming old man i must say... and good physique too... he can't be very young coz he's got white hair. nevermind, one day i'll find out how old he is... haha! ohh... have this thing for old man who maintain themselves well over the years instead of developing pot bellies... haha!

he's really nice, had a chat wif him abt my expectations for the posting... he drew out this timetable abt stuff tt's going on for the department. took special note that he said "you can come IF YOU WANT"... haha! so looks like i can dun go if i dun want to... tt's impt... haha!

OH!! must tok abt the most embarrassing thing that happened to me... e departmental secretary, Anne, was taking me on a tour... and i dunno how i slipped n fell as i was going down a slope... stupid court shoes!! grr... and i had to hold on to a DUSTBIN to keep my balance. got an abrasion on my knuckle coz it hit the tar ground... waahhhh!!! both of us were positively shocked... hahaha!! and she kept asking me if i was hurt. haha! sheesh... she must think i'm a klutz... oh well, maybe i am but she doesn't hafta know it like on e first day right?? haaaiiii...

after tt, i joined the whole transplant team for a liver transplant assessment meeting... where they screened through details abt every pt to be activated for transplant, those already activated and those posttransplant. they were going realllyyyyy fast coz i think some of those pts they kinda know their case notes by heart... and everyone knows wat was going on except me... all i caught was... there r a lot more Hep C compared to Hep B... n many more diseases that r rare in S'pore... like primary sclerosing cholangitis, primary biliary cirrhosis...

one thing of note is, their transplant team's multi-disciplinary... (though i'm not really sure how it's done in s'pore) e entire team comprising of medical social worker, occupational therapy, nursing officers, psychiatrists, surgeons, physicians all sit down together n talk! this way, they get a more wholistic approach towards the patients... for example, they'll actually talk about issues like anxiety in the patient, whether they're mentally prepared for the liver transplant, whether post transplant patients are willing to get up n walk around, family background and support, etc. really nice...

i haven't seen much of this in s'pore hospital at least... all ppl do is refer blue letter... and the psychiatrist review the patient n write in the case notes. think this system of sitting down n discussing patients as a whole individual is something great which we should learn!

next, it was afternoon ward rounds... they do e rounds after sitting down n discussing the case notes... so everyone know roughly the progress of the pts... then we see e patients!

i was basically rather quiet, still getting adapted to the people here... and plus, i only knew today that i'll be so closely dealing wif liver transplant patients... din read up on anything at all!!! so i spent the evening n night reading up on liver cirrhosis, portal hypertension, oesophageal varices... hopefully i'll be able to participate more n ask more "intelligent" questions the next day...