About

Hi world.

I’m a 2nd year medical student at the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

More about Monash Medicine
As part of our 5 year course, medical students undergo 2 pre-clinical years and 2 years of clinical training in a hospital setting. In our 2 pre-clinical years, we learn the basic sciences necessary to understand clinical practice: anatomy, biochemistry, histology, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, neuroscience. These components constitute the THEME 3 part of our course.

We also have 3 other themes, 1,2 and 4. Theme 1 focusses on professional development like patient communication, medicolegal aspects and medical ethics. Theme 2 teaches us public health issues like epidemiology, health promotion, medical sociology etc. Theme 4 is the clinical skills component of the course in which we learn basic procedures and clinical examinations as well as basic diagnoses.

I consider PCL the 5th component of the MBBS course at Monash. It stands for Patient Centred Learning and serves to integrate all 4 themes of what we have learnt over each week.

In year 2, we undertake quite a few projects and assignments to fulfill ‘portfolio’ requirements. They are the Community Placement Project, Health Promotion and Knowledge Management Project, Student Project Cases, Critical Learning Incident report, Behavioral Change project and Rural Place Case Report Assignment. Other written projects are relatively minor compared to these main ones.

If you have queries about year 1 and 2 of the Monash MBBS course, please feel free to leave some comments or contact me @ joshchongbl@gmail.com.

More about Myself
I’ve always been interested in medicine and honestly wouldn’t know what I would be doing if I didn’t do medicine – probably marine biology? Both my parents are doctors, an anaesthesiologist and a gastroenterologist.

Coming to Australia to study has been a big step for me because it sees me located far away from my friends and family. However, it is good to test the limits of your comfort zone – the past 1.5 years have been good for me here in Melbourne. Melbourne is an interesting city and I do urge everyone to pay a visit to Melbourne at least once.

I play football (soccer), golf and a bit of tennis as my preferred sports. I’m a newbie to golf but I intend to continue playing because I enjoy it immensely. The serenity of the course, the precision-focussed nature and the fact that you can play it by yourself makes the game great for people of all ages. Besides, the availability of golf courses, paired with the extremely affordable prices, here in Melbourne give me absolutely no reason to not keep it up.

My Inclinations In Medicine
I see myself practising in a surgical discipline in the future and I will expound on this in my posts on the blog. Other interests include infectious disease and neurology.