GP Posting

SInce everyone seemed to have so much to say about their posting, thought i might as well fill some space.

GP Posting, Day 1:

Well of course I was nervous, the prospects of sitting in a tiny examination with a doctor for 7 straight hours, is very different from the KKB Hospital rounds we’ve been doing the past semesters. Because right there in that room, I can’t wait for other students to answer the questions for me, I can pretend I am a wall, I can’t disappear to the canteen when I see a doctor walking by, I am to sit in my chair, watch, listen, wait and hopefully, learn. And of course what I always dread the most is the shooting game. The game where doctors get to shoot me down with questions that I should already know the answers to, but at the moment I open my mouth to answer, I forget. That’s another thing you know, I usually have a BIG mouth, but that seems to shrink into a hardly audible squeak when I talk in formal settings. Anyways those were my anxieties before I drove my wira to the clinic. What if my hair is too messy? What if my clothes were not appropriate? What if I cant answer questions a Form5 student could? What if my silly grin came up again and I made a fool of myself? What if he tells me I just wasn’t cut out to be a doctor and should just go crawl back into a dustbin? From experience and rumours, I had concluded that doctors are mean to noob medical students like us. Whether it is out of love to toughen us up, or concern because that was the only way they were taught oldschool, or some students just honestly deserve a wake up call (I’m raising my hand for this one) or they just forgot last night’s dose of anti-depressant medicine, I don’t know, but I was scared. That’s why for the better half of the morning session in the clinic I sat on my stool and hoped hard for a steady flow of patients, sounds mean of me to hope people get sick, but I just wanted the doctor occupied enough so he wouldn’t ask me any questions, and besides I liked watching him converse with the patients and perform his examinations, so calm and collected. I was happy for about an hour, but even a busy clinic doesn’t have patients marching in steadily at 60seconds intervals. It was inevitable. I hold my Oxford’s handbook tightly even though I’ve hardly used it in my life, I hear it’s supposed to be the god-given gift to all medical student in the situation I was in at that moment: desperate. He begins by reviewing some of the patients we’ve seen so far, something about this and something about that, I panic. Then he asks what we know about the said condition, which was a rather simple disease but I start praying Xandra was listening more than I was. Through out the day the questions trickled in slowly, but to my surprise the sarcasm I had been expecting didn’t arrive at all. I still couldn’t answer most of the questions, of course that’s true because I haven’t been studying, and when I tried to answer using common sense and luck some weren’t as accurate, but he didn’t make me feel like I should feel miserable for my sorry self. I was a little shocked, in a good way. He asked our opinions on things that didn’t have textbook answers and didn’t judge us of it. All in all, I am glad I met a doctor who even after being so qualified in many ways and experienced as he is, tries to understand the babbling of a little medical student shivering from head to toe in her lab coat waiting to be embarrassed. Surprisingly I am looking forward to day 2, and not so surprisingly I think I need to go do a little reading up now =P.

Yeah so thats what i was thinking after the first day at the clinic. The following 4 days were just fine, came back with a flu and fever. Can't believe I'm a 3rd year medical student already.