Chan Weng Kit's Blogspot: Resolution

Thursday, 5 January 2023

DAY 2289-2317

Dec 8 - Jan 5

1) Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2023!! And what a year it has been. Starting where I last left off, the online exams (for the Research in Health Module) went smoothly, although we have yet to receive our results. Hopefully all of us pass and can progress to the next block of research in August, during the first block of Foundation Year 2 training.

2) Trauma and orthopaedics has been an interesting rotation so far, if slightly challenging to wrap one's head around. For example, there are five different wards - Wards 225-228, and Ward 112. Ward 226 is a mixed ward comprising both orthopaedic and spines patients, while Ward 228 is a neurosurgery ward with some ortho / spines patients. Ward 112 is the elective orthopaedic unit which has recently become a trauma unit, but is currently a medical ward. The other wards are more straightforward - Ward 225 is for neck of femur fractures, and Ward 227 is for acute trauma rehab. All of this took me some getting used to.

3) Overall, this is mainly a medical job in a surgical ward. Commonly encountered scenarios include prescribing adequate pain relief, managing constipation, managing infection, checking wound dressing sites, checking post-op X-rays, and medically optimising patients pre- and post-operatively. Based on my limited experience so far, I've found spines to be more challenging than orthopaedics, with more complex presentations requiring senior input.

4) It is customary to have a New Year's resolution. For me, it is to make it through Foundation Year training, and then decide for certain what I'd like to pursue in life. With any luck, the coming rotations will help me make up my mind. For now, I'm quite happy and content with the way things are going. Hopefully this will be another good year for everyone. Thanks for visiting my blog as always, and have a great year ahead. Cheers!

Merry Xmas from Ward 228 :)

L-R: Myself, Julian, and Amir

A perk of working late shifts (14:00-22:00) is you get this "Nervecentre Device"

- essentially a repurposed iPhone that alerts the doctor of any urgent tasks

Guess who decided to grab two of these today

Freezing at -8° Celsius

Got myself a gym bag for travelling XD

Unexpectedly shift at County Hospital today

Love the Christmas decorations in front of the hospital

A rainy night

Yes, permission was sought beforehand

First time doing bloods in the paediatric ward

Bloods done today

The wards may be poorly staffed, but the staff are well fed :)

New Year, New Haircut

Saturday, 4 March 2017

DAY 184

Mar 4

1) Today has been a very eventful day for me. So I had to wake up early to make it for the RCSI-MUN (Model United Nations) which started at 9.00am. Our motion for today was "Battling Antibiotic Resistance", and each candidate was assigned a country to represent. So Mary and I were the delegates of Canada, and there were various representatives from all over the world - including USA, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad and Tobago, France etc.

2) We broke the motion up into several subtopics and discussed from there. Essentially we tried to follow the guidelines and conduct of the real United Nations. For instance, we raised our placards when intending to speak, and referred to ourselves as "this delegate" rather than using the pronoun "I". And of course, we drafted out a working paper, which was to become a resolution as a whole.

3) Fast forward a couple of hours, and we had lunch in the Atrium. This was a good time to get to know everyone better, and I made a lot of friends (mostly senior or GEM students) from various backgrounds. It was very exciting to meet so many people with this much enthusiasm for this event. After break, discussion resumed and we carried on with the submission of our final resolution, which had been amended and modified to take into consideration the other countries' suggestions/ideas.

4) Finally at late noon, we went into actual voting procedure. Our resolution had received a unanimous vote (which is very rare in MUN - most of them are just majority votes) as almost everyone agreed with the proposed solution and the method by which it would be implemented! In a usual MUN setting, the entire objective is to draft out a resolution which can get accepted or declined, depending on the number of votes we receive. In our case, you could say we were extremely successful since essentially everyone agreed with our resolution :D

5) That was the end of this year's MUN - and I cannot wait for the next one to come around. The rest of the day I have no choice but to work on my Principal Seminars, because they are drawing closer and closer as the days go by. That would be all from me today, and I hope you enjoyed reading about today's event. Thanks for reading as always, and have a great day. Cheers!