End of Surgery Posting

My 4-week surgery posting ended with a clinical and written exam last Friday. I had a rectal cancer patient who came in for chemotherapy for the clinical exam. The case was easy, almost spot on. Unluckily, I got the head of the surgical department, Mr. P, as my examiner, who's also an expert in colorectal carcinoma. I get the same comment as the top student in my group who was also examined by him:
"Your pass is out of mercy!". Fuhh... at least passed!

Morning ward rounds.

The written paper was easy enough, no fret there. Looking back, the questions asked by Mr. P wasn't that hard at all if we were to follow the surgical clinics daily without fail. Thing is, we med students always think that covering the textbooks would be more important!

In surgical theatre - gastric fundoplication.

We were supposed to be in the clinics everyday, but yours truly ended up attending only... let's just say my attendance was far below un-satisfactory ok! The rest of my mates' attendance too, got the attention of the dean. Heh heh...

In surgical theatre - herniorrhapphy.

We were supposed to be in the operating theatre daily too! And you guessed it right - I went only once! Not that bad lar considering I observed 2 important surgical procedures that day. A gastric fundoplication and a herniorrhapphy.

Actually right, cannot blame us students lar. Where got enough time?! We were expected to clerk patients the night before, reach hospital at 8am for case presentations (some stretches till 10.30am), then straight away go clinic till 12pm, then class from 2 to 4pm.

Clinical skills - examining breasts!

Sometimes got extra clinical skills class, add in another 2 hours. One whole day already so blardy packed, brain wanna explode, sometimes still need to on-call. If no on-call, have to go ward also to prepare cases for next morning's round.

Females can be shy too when it comes to examining fake breasts!

And we were supposed to extract some time from our already super jammed packed timetable for private studies. Hello, no life meh! Night time supposed to be chill-out time mah!

Frustrated, and tired, I ponteng-ed quite a number of the sessions. Life cannot be so stressful one! Mr. P's remark "I don't know if it's us that are not teaching you guys enough or it's you guys who never learn enough" didn't go unfounded.

Inserting a CVP into a plastic tube!

Nevertheless, surgery posting is one of my favourite posting, and one that I might further my studies on. Liked the surgical skills involved - the knotting, suturing, the instruments, the surgeries, etc. Everything is in sync with my inherent love to cut live people up! Ha ha just kidding!

TBL classes - time to catch up on sleep!

I also realised that surgeon lecturers have the tendency to be super-duper long-winded, besides the ability of standing still in the ward for 2.5 hours in one seating! Two-and-a-half hour of talking and standing still, what the heck! One can already finish a half-marathon and sitting on the grass gulping 100Plus!

And we students have to suffer in the end lah - no time to study in the day, study at night lor. And it is evident by noon who had studied the most the night before - the sleepy heads (majority girls)!

How you wished you were in medical school, right?! Ya riiiiggghhhtt....