Aug 27, 2005

Greetings to my most honorable supersenior

From the floor of Friendster’s bulletin:

Word of wisdom from this mamat:

"i dunno what is happening of our batch lately, there r just so many rude words exchanged in the air, flew out of the mouth deliberately….some even
dare to classify a person as not up to the par when come to future dr…he can only mop the floor he said…well who r u to say that…i dont think of u as
a pure candidate of a dr either…niether any of us…but still we move on and pick bits n pieces of wisdom from our lecturers, trying to act like one in
the wards n clinics…but the time will come n watch out for that time….for u have to be responsible for your own words…saying these n that person of not capable of becoming a dr…take a good look of your own self in the mirror!"

Being in a final year, the end of all, and the beginning of all. It is the end of our 5 years course, and the beginning of our working world as a doctor. Being at the end of all, one could not help but review what we had done, what we had achieved, what we have yet to do and what we long to achieve in this 5 years. Just last month, during my birthday, I received a rather heart warming flashback of collection of pictures from my best friend from the first year till now.

In our faculty, the final years were deemed to be superseniors. The taiko of all taiko. The tailo of all tailo.

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What are the parameters that determines the super-ness in us?

  • how many exams we had passed with flying colours over the 5 years?
  • how much clinical knowledge/skills we had acquired so far?
  • how many questions from that lecturers that we can actually answer without wrinkling our forehead?
  • how many spot diagnosis that we can make with a blink of an eye?
  • how many prof or doctors who actually recognize/praises you?
  • how many babies we can actually deliver without any perineal tear?
  • how many "interesting case" we had seen per week?
  • how well one can bitch about the incompetence of other clinical colleague?
  • how well one can spin off the whole pathways of cranial nerves?

There’s a chinese saying literally translated as "3 persons walking, surely everyone of them will be the teacher to the other two". I believe everyone is unique in our own way, and we could really learn from one another. Everyone is our teacher.

Through out my life, I’m lucky to meet a few people who were actually better than me. They are deemed better not because they had defeated me, not because they were beyond my league, but simply because they were able to make me as good as they are. They are definitely better.

I beg to differ from "a pure candidate of a dr either…neither any of us…". I believe everyone are a candidate for a doctor, as long as you pass the final MBBS exam with all the reading and knowledge input from the lecturers.

Why do we need education in the first place?

The end and aim of education is the development of character. By the final year, we were all supposed to be florid with all the appropriate values. But from several incidents lately, all the coercion, all the brutality, all the violence of words and action, it can only mean one thing - Patrick Tan had failed. *PPD had failed. *DPHS had failed. UM(Medic) had failed. Not just fail to be a good future doctor, but fail to be a good human being.

Perhaps most of us will be graduating with 1/3 of MBBS(UM) next year.

* in UM, we had 3 strains to follow in order to be a supreme great excellent superb nice interesting good doctor, but all the focus seems to be only for no.1:

  1. basic sciences and clinical knowledge/skill
  2. personal profesional development
  3. doctor, patient, hospital and society

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