Examinations
So I just had my first two university examinations. It just occurred to me yesterday while walking to the examination venue that these are examinations of my first year in med-school. Holy crap, I've almost completed an entire year of med-school. I asked myself what I have learned during the past year. My immediate response was: nothing! I feel just as clueless about diseases as I did a year ago. I wouldn't be able to treat a patient any more accurately than before commencing university. However, I don't think "nothing" is completely true either... I've put in a lot of effort into uni work, and how can I have gained zero knowledge from all these hundreds of hours of work?? After some contemplation, I've finally figured out why I feel like I've learned nothing this year.
I suppose my expectations of what I would learn were too high from the very beginning. Before I started uni, I expected to learn enough knowledge, that by the end of the year, I would be able to diagnose people. Haha, I can hear how daft and impossible that sounds like now. I don't mean I expected myself to be a professional doctor and diagnose people accurately, but I did think would know a lot more about diseases than I currently do.
I was simply too ignorant. I thought anatomy was going to be easy, just some memorising, how damn hard could that be, right? Certainly boring, but not hard. Oh, how completely wrong I was! At least one thing I've learned is that anatomy is not just about memorising. Yes, you do have to memorise names of organs and structures, but that's the easy and boring part. The hard part is knowing where it is in your body in relation to its adjacent stuctures as well as the surface anatomy. For instance, the liver. Ok, it's in your abdominal area on the right side, easy. But it's also a three dimensional unsymmetrical structure, surrounded by other organs. By which organs is it surrounded? How are the other organs orientated around it? How does the liver and its adjacent structures look like in health? What happens in disease? How does that affect the surrounding structures? Etc.etc.etc. There're a lot of different aspects to learn and to understand besides the memorising. This is what I did not realised in the beginning. All I expected to learn was: the liver - where is it? What liver diseases can you get? How would you treat them? Ok, great, next organ!
So I suppose utimately, I still know very little about diseases and treating patients. Even after my first year. I wonder how much more knowledge I will have this time next year. Maybe I'll be able to tell you more about liver diseases then. I grant you permission to ask away about fatty liver disease in a year!
Anyway, I have two more examinations to go. One of them is practical clinical skills examination, which is going to be quite hard, as we don't get many opportunities to actually practice them (unless anyone is interested in volunteering as my patient..??). So I better go and do some revision now, probably carry on practicing CPR on my poor stuffed doggy.
I suppose my expectations of what I would learn were too high from the very beginning. Before I started uni, I expected to learn enough knowledge, that by the end of the year, I would be able to diagnose people. Haha, I can hear how daft and impossible that sounds like now. I don't mean I expected myself to be a professional doctor and diagnose people accurately, but I did think would know a lot more about diseases than I currently do.
I was simply too ignorant. I thought anatomy was going to be easy, just some memorising, how damn hard could that be, right? Certainly boring, but not hard. Oh, how completely wrong I was! At least one thing I've learned is that anatomy is not just about memorising. Yes, you do have to memorise names of organs and structures, but that's the easy and boring part. The hard part is knowing where it is in your body in relation to its adjacent stuctures as well as the surface anatomy. For instance, the liver. Ok, it's in your abdominal area on the right side, easy. But it's also a three dimensional unsymmetrical structure, surrounded by other organs. By which organs is it surrounded? How are the other organs orientated around it? How does the liver and its adjacent structures look like in health? What happens in disease? How does that affect the surrounding structures? Etc.etc.etc. There're a lot of different aspects to learn and to understand besides the memorising. This is what I did not realised in the beginning. All I expected to learn was: the liver - where is it? What liver diseases can you get? How would you treat them? Ok, great, next organ!
So I suppose utimately, I still know very little about diseases and treating patients. Even after my first year. I wonder how much more knowledge I will have this time next year. Maybe I'll be able to tell you more about liver diseases then. I grant you permission to ask away about fatty liver disease in a year!
Anyway, I have two more examinations to go. One of them is practical clinical skills examination, which is going to be quite hard, as we don't get many opportunities to actually practice them (unless anyone is interested in volunteering as my patient..??). So I better go and do some revision now, probably carry on practicing CPR on my poor stuffed doggy.
