Looking back to what have happened round this year, it is quite a different life from previous years. Not only books, notes and powerpoints, we see what is reality and inability.
Reality is not only due to so many investigations and managements are different from textbooks, but so many things that are not taught by textbooks. Like in Surgery, there is no textbook on tubes and drains, you just see them in the treatment room. Later some nice guys, I mean, our fellow classmates, made a powerpoint on that; Some bad guys like me, simply steal, oh, "borrow" them from wards.
Sometimes I blame classmates in my heart, why don't you learn from the reality? Or, just are they too "realistic"? Whenever there is an abdominal mass, whenever there is a murmur, everyone in the hospital rushes to find out that patient. After that, they wave their hands, "Bye. It’s so useless to hang around in wards. Let's go to the library." When my friends see me assisting some procedures, like bone marrow biopsy, lumbar puncture, plueral or abdominal tap, they just run crazy and said "Oh dear, why are you doing so? It's the duty of nurses. You know nothing about dressings, needles and syringes." I am too disappointed. You must have heard a quote "you see once, you do once, you teach one." When I have seen one procedure assisted by the nurses, I volunteer to assist in the next same procedure. This cannot be learnt from books, even with comprehensive illustrations.
One night, when I saw a group of nursing students inserting a Ryle’s tube, I asked my friends, have you seen one before? “Nope.” I was too shocked to find out this, and they were too shocked when I pulled them into the curtain, and assisting the nursing student! “This is the duty of nurses!” this sentence came again. I refuted, “You know how to write 2D1S Q8H in the case note, right? Can you go to the treatment room to get the things and have one pile of normal saline flowing into this patient please?” I am not saying that nurses are not trustworthy; but we cannot rely solely on them, even simple thing cannot be done, we are no better than a nurse, doctor. In some busy times, when they are in trouble, we can also help them out. It’s not time to differentiate our job by our job title. In my mind, we should know everything in wards. This is the full reality, examination is only part of it, don’t be too realistic sometimes.
Inability is, I think you must have felt it, doing nothing except from standing still at the bedside with silence like a 望夫石 and do nothing or say nothing to the patient. You can go nowhere when facing a 78-year-old man with newly diagnosed CRC cries in front of you. You can be helpless when you see a 22-year-old girl living with SLE for 3 years already, quitted from her job and studies. Yeah, we elicit the history, but we are like digging our own graves and then jump into it, since we can seldom help out.
Your relatives, friends, relatives of your friends or friends of your relatives must have asked you this and that about their body. Oh why my BP is 98/43? Am I having hypotension? Is something wrong inside my body? Oh why my… too many. And you can feel that you know nothing about this. We learn too many about ulcerative colitis, but we feel lost when your brother got gastroenteritis. You know well about steroid, ventolin or ipratropium in COPD, but what to give when our roomie got an URTI? Oh easy – supportive – but actually how? Sometimes we can tackle, sometimes we get defeated.
It’s not uncommon to see people like me, writing in xanga or facebook or shouting “I must work hard” in the opening of a new academic year. Finally I am tired, I am gloomy, and I am frustrated, because we can clearly feel our inability when challenged by even some simple things. Yet, we are still year three, but we are too useless, and we will be Medical Doctors in 850 days, sometimes I just want to escape.
Yes, being a doctor has been my dream from my age of 7, but I just cannot guarantee that I would be a safe doctor. I know nothing, and I miss something. I know there is time that I can improve, I just feel like there is too little. When I see my fellow secondary classmates, teachers, and 師弟妹, calling me Doctor with respect, having faith and hope in me, I feel shameful on myself. Especially when my 師弟妹 treat me as a role model, asking me about life in the Medical Faculty or University, and how can I pass with flying colors in pubic examinations, I want to hide inside a cave.
“I know that I know nothing.”
Socrates.
Well, enough grumbles. Just see too many things and have too much inside my heart. There are examinations that give me a good excuse to drop my pen. My friends always say that, to read my entry and get the theme in the quickest way – is to read the first two and last two paragraph in detail – even without looking at any words in the middle, you will still know what I am talking about.
Opps. I should have put this in the first line.
Reality is not only due to so many investigations and managements are different from textbooks, but so many things that are not taught by textbooks. Like in Surgery, there is no textbook on tubes and drains, you just see them in the treatment room. Later some nice guys, I mean, our fellow classmates, made a powerpoint on that; Some bad guys like me, simply steal, oh, "borrow" them from wards.
Sometimes I blame classmates in my heart, why don't you learn from the reality? Or, just are they too "realistic"? Whenever there is an abdominal mass, whenever there is a murmur, everyone in the hospital rushes to find out that patient. After that, they wave their hands, "Bye. It’s so useless to hang around in wards. Let's go to the library." When my friends see me assisting some procedures, like bone marrow biopsy, lumbar puncture, plueral or abdominal tap, they just run crazy and said "Oh dear, why are you doing so? It's the duty of nurses. You know nothing about dressings, needles and syringes." I am too disappointed. You must have heard a quote "you see once, you do once, you teach one." When I have seen one procedure assisted by the nurses, I volunteer to assist in the next same procedure. This cannot be learnt from books, even with comprehensive illustrations.
One night, when I saw a group of nursing students inserting a Ryle’s tube, I asked my friends, have you seen one before? “Nope.” I was too shocked to find out this, and they were too shocked when I pulled them into the curtain, and assisting the nursing student! “This is the duty of nurses!” this sentence came again. I refuted, “You know how to write 2D1S Q8H in the case note, right? Can you go to the treatment room to get the things and have one pile of normal saline flowing into this patient please?” I am not saying that nurses are not trustworthy; but we cannot rely solely on them, even simple thing cannot be done, we are no better than a nurse, doctor. In some busy times, when they are in trouble, we can also help them out. It’s not time to differentiate our job by our job title. In my mind, we should know everything in wards. This is the full reality, examination is only part of it, don’t be too realistic sometimes.
Inability is, I think you must have felt it, doing nothing except from standing still at the bedside with silence like a 望夫石 and do nothing or say nothing to the patient. You can go nowhere when facing a 78-year-old man with newly diagnosed CRC cries in front of you. You can be helpless when you see a 22-year-old girl living with SLE for 3 years already, quitted from her job and studies. Yeah, we elicit the history, but we are like digging our own graves and then jump into it, since we can seldom help out.
Your relatives, friends, relatives of your friends or friends of your relatives must have asked you this and that about their body. Oh why my BP is 98/43? Am I having hypotension? Is something wrong inside my body? Oh why my… too many. And you can feel that you know nothing about this. We learn too many about ulcerative colitis, but we feel lost when your brother got gastroenteritis. You know well about steroid, ventolin or ipratropium in COPD, but what to give when our roomie got an URTI? Oh easy – supportive – but actually how? Sometimes we can tackle, sometimes we get defeated.
It’s not uncommon to see people like me, writing in xanga or facebook or shouting “I must work hard” in the opening of a new academic year. Finally I am tired, I am gloomy, and I am frustrated, because we can clearly feel our inability when challenged by even some simple things. Yet, we are still year three, but we are too useless, and we will be Medical Doctors in 850 days, sometimes I just want to escape.
Yes, being a doctor has been my dream from my age of 7, but I just cannot guarantee that I would be a safe doctor. I know nothing, and I miss something. I know there is time that I can improve, I just feel like there is too little. When I see my fellow secondary classmates, teachers, and 師弟妹, calling me Doctor with respect, having faith and hope in me, I feel shameful on myself. Especially when my 師弟妹 treat me as a role model, asking me about life in the Medical Faculty or University, and how can I pass with flying colors in pubic examinations, I want to hide inside a cave.
“I know that I know nothing.”
Socrates.
Well, enough grumbles. Just see too many things and have too much inside my heart. There are examinations that give me a good excuse to drop my pen. My friends always say that, to read my entry and get the theme in the quickest way – is to read the first two and last two paragraph in detail – even without looking at any words in the middle, you will still know what I am talking about.
Opps. I should have put this in the first line.
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