Chan Weng Kit's Blogspot: DAY 212

Apr 1

1) Today has been a really tiring day, but no less exciting for it. The main itinerary of the day was the "Time Bomb Conference", organised by MMII (Malaysian Medics International Ireland). For this, I was up by 6.30am sharp, to ensure I reached Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute (TBSI) by 8.00am. We attended a short briefing, to ensure that we knew each of our roles inside out. Our schedule was fully packed for the day, so there was not much room for delay.

2) So in total, there were four talks by Dr. Ignacio, Dr. Little, Dr. Khoo, and Dr. Flannagan, respectively. In between each of these talks, there was a lot of interactive games to be had. The first of this was the "debates" segment, which was actually a Crisis event taken from a MUN (Model United Nations). Essentially, participants role-played as ministers of WHO in tackling a bio-war crisis, which had a certain "Professor X" who had created a "Virus X" and was threatening to unleash it upon the general public. The general consensus for the session was that there was a lot of active participation, with some groups actually able to cast suspicion on who Prof. X was.

3) In the afternoon, over lunch, the participants had the opportunity to visit various booths set up, which all had the common theme of "Time Bomb" or "emergency situation!" written all over them. Among this included sessions on Emergency First Aid; everything from DRABC's (first-aid procedure) to performing CPR and using AEDs (Automatic External Defibrillator). It was really fun and interactive throughout.

4) The last event I was involved in was the Forensic Games. Participants were broken up into groups, and rotated across four different stations, where they had to investigate the death of a certain "Uncle Soon". Afterwards, they had to piece together all the clues to formulate a prognosis as to how the victim died. There was a short quiz afterward, designed to test the knowledge and understanding of the patient's disease. I was particularly impressed by how fast everyone was able to answer the questions. Although some of them were quite straightforward, some required ample in-depth knowledge and the participants certainly didn't disappoint.

5) By four plus, the last event had ended, and everyone went back. Everyone except us, who were involved with the event. We had a semiformal feedback session, where we got a chance to voice our opinions on the event, and suggest improvements for the future. By 5.30pm, everyone was completely drained, so we called it a day. Yours truly still has an exam to worry about this coming Tuesday, so it was back to Mercer Library for another round of study. Of course, it is quite unreasonable to think that my brain will last long after what has been a hectic day, so I packed my stuff early and went home to take a well-deserved rest. That has been my day, and hopefully you enjoyed reading about it. Thanks as always, and have a great day. Cheers!

P.S. Do scroll down for many pics of the event. Enjoy ^^