Aussie-Chinese Girl Reflects on Her Med Practitioner Journey

  Biggest takeaway? Interacting with patients’ parents is not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.  *sigh in relief x1000* Don’t get me wrong though, I defs spent an inordinate amount of time on my first ED shift hyping myself up to enter a cubicle and give the whole “I’m a med student, doctor told me I could come and talk to you about why your kid is in hospital, are you happy to do so?”  *internal monologue: please don’t bite me I’m sorry I’ll just excuse myself out now*  Reality check? I have yet to be rejected by a parent, and actually, most are quite happy to discuss what’s going on and raise any concerns that may have arisen in the interim, doubly so if they've just been waiting in the waiting room for hours- apparently seeing even a med student feels like they're getting attention (thank you for overestimating my contribution)  Takeaway 2: common things are common - a no brainer but don't think that hit as hard last year as it does now. <1yo w...

 First of all, how the fck are we already 10 days into the fcking THIRD MONTH of 2024 and 6 weeks of MD3 has already gone and pass. No jokes, just feeling like I know what's up with O&G and already it's time to move onto another rotation 💀💀💀 guess there's some continuity in content with neonates technically being under paeds but otherwise all new content and ref ranges to learn 😨😨 But I digress and now back to the actual content of this post - REFLECTION! Everyone's fav part of PP what with the Gibb's cycle, how can we not 😆 not no, my brain is not str enough for that, you're just gonna get a very chaotic ver of that today 🙃🤡😚 #1 Don't skimp on sleep - pretty sure this was one of my tips for incoming MD2, but hey, "do as I preach, no as I do"...but no seriously, I had a slap in the face wake up moment just this week. Day 1 bedtime procrastination, just under 6hr sleep - could barely focus on what's going on in hosp, felt sick to t...

This post is prompted by all the new faces I'm seeing at the hospital and the fact that I've signed up to be a Peer tutor/mentor for a group of MD2s, so here goes nothing... 1. Everyone has their own golden ratio of placement:textbook/lecture study and that's alright - caveat is you do the min 20hr placement (fr I've heard of people repeating MD2 because of attendance 💀). Personally, I worked out I'm a more practical learner and things I learn opportunistically on the ward are what stick with me the most, so my ratio was more 70-80 ward: 20-30 textbook learning. There is the downside of feeling like I'm adding bricks to a wobbly pier, but honestly, uncertainty is just a feeling we have to learn to get used to in medicine regardless. Also, it's totally fine if your golden ratio changes according to which rotation you're on.  2. Getting enough sleep is more important than cramming in one last lecture or podcast or practice qs -  to be quite frank if you...