Set off for RMH at 730am. Another windy day and my body shivered badly when I headed to the tram stop. However, I was full of anticipation of what I would encounter today in the hospital. Ward round is always the early morning routine in all hospitals. There was a patient in a myasthenia crisis which affected his respiration badly. It was quite sad to see patient suffered. However, the team was always ready to bring comfort and to ease the pain that the patient had gone through. And Dr. David had set a good role for me as I observed how he listened, comforted, convinced and reassured two patients who broke into tears due to their illnesses. I could sense that patients were one part of the team. They had the right to know what is happening to them; what had been done on them; what are the outcomes.
There was that one time when we came out from patient’s room, Dr. David turned to us the medical students and asked,
“What did I do when I meet patients?”
“I shake their hand and I come to their level. Remember that.”
This is the basic thing we should know, but, most of the times we tend to forget. Always respect the patients.
That was a long morning ward round. I was quite excited when I heard that a registrar was going to assess one of the medical students to perform respiratory examination. Frankly speaking, it has been a while since I practised PE. What a shame. Hence, I joined them and observed. The steps were more or less the same as what I had learnt. The registrar was impressed by the examination skill of Morgan, so did I. He was so confident and the flow was smooth. It was a case of pleural effusion. There was obvious sign of decrease breath sound and stony dull on percussion on the affected side.
It was 1.00pm when the grand round presentation started. It took place at Charles LaTrobe Lecture Theatre. The topic was “Solving Big Clinical Problems through Research”. The presentation began with the History of Walter & Eliza Hall Institute, which is a medical research institute. The other sub-topics included the history of Influenza pandemic and how research had contributed to the invention of its vaccine, followed by research on finding the cure of hepatitis B, coeliac diseases and chemo-resistant leukemia. They were delivered by infectious diseases specialist, gastroenterologist and haematologist respectively, who were involved in the researches.
Lastly, I attended a pathology lecture. (My basic knowledge is …. Urgh ! I forgot many things which I had learnt in preclinical years. Damn!)
Finally, I decided to call it a day !
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