Total Recall

I did some thinking about the semester gone by today and here are some of my thoughts on it.

Semester 1 of year 2 seemed like ‘real’ medicine compared to first year. We learnt more about the CVS and the respiratory system. We also touched on renal medicine and covered a bit more neuroscience.

I had a few projects like the Student Project Case on Asbestos, Health Promotion and Knowledge Management and the Rural Placement Case Report. These were all quite interesting projects to research and write.

For the SPC, we actually did some creative presentation: a House M.D. like skit, describing asbestos related lung diseases. I hope we got a good grade for that because we practised and prepared quite abit.

There were a few setbacks as well – I didn’t get a good grade for the HPKM ethics proposal, not because there were blatant ethical flaws in our project, but because we didn’t read the guidelines and attend the lectures pertaining to the submission of the ethics proposal and the whole group mucked it up badly. The other setback was getting ‘poor rapport’ commented in a few stations of my OSCE toward the end of semester 1.

Also, the semester 1 exam was postponed much to my dismay – I was ready to study hard for it and do well. Now I’ve lost my momentum of study and struggling to cover 2 lectures a day. I hope I still manage a respectable grade although it’s a meagre 5% of the year’s grade.

Out of school, things went pretty well I think. Other than a plan to moving out with a friend falling through. I bought a new MacBook Pro, the one I’m using to blog this entry right now. I also made some new friends, and strengthened other ties.

Overall, I must say it’s been a good first semester for me! Expectations and resolutions for the next semester to come along soon.

That Wretched Aedes

Mosquitoes have been around for millions and millions of years; dinosaur DNA was extracted from a fossilized mosquito in the movie ‘Jurassic Park’. Today I am not crediting the mosquito at all, in fact I am writing about a serious disease that mosquitoes transmit.

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes carry the Dengue virus – a type of flavivirus. Other diseases involving flaviviruses would be Japanese Encephalitis (SEA) and Murray Valley encephalitis (Aus).

All 4 types of dengue have similar clinical presentations – sudden onset fever, headaches, backpain with severe myalgia. Macular rash and red eye are also signs of dengue fever. Other symptoms include anorexia, nausea and paraesthesia. Due to the severe thrombocytopenia (low platelet count) associated with dengue, epistaxis (nose bleeding), gum bleeding, petechiae and bleeding from existing GIT lesions are common. The disease usually lasts between a week and 14 days in an uncomplicated case.

As with other viruses, you can’t get dengue from the same serotype a second time. (You can’t get dengue 1, twice) However, a second infection from a different serotype of dengue can cause Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever – fortunately, this is rather rare.

Diagnostic investigations include FBE, IgM ELISA (serology) and RT-PCR during the acute phase.

A report from Singapore tells the tale of the situation there

The dengue situation here has hit epidemic level for the first time since 2005, with 401 cases reported last week.

The outbreak is officially regarded as an epidemic when more than 378 cases are reported in a week. The last dengue epidemic was in October 2005, when the weekly tally hit 387.

Last week’s figure is a hefty 37 per cent increase from the 293 reported cases the week before.

The 2,868 cases in the first six months of this year is double the number for the same period last year.

As you can see, the scale of the problem is NOT small. Researchers are already confident that a vaccine will be found; but even after that, clinical trials will take ~7 years before the vaccine can be approved and released.

From the same article as above:

Scientists are racing to find a vaccine for dengue and to discover the reasons why dengue epidemics are becoming more frequent.

And while a drug could be ready for human testing by the end of next year, the research still has a long way to go. Professor Paul Herrling, chairman of the Singapore-based Novartis Institute of Tropical Diseases, said it would take up to seven years to get the drug onto the market if initial trials are successful. In the meantime, there is a risk the virus will mutate, he said.

Lucky for me, I’m not residing in a dengue-endemic area at the moment. If you ARE living in the tropics, please protect yourself from dengue: use some insect repellent and avoid densely forested areas.

Also refer to the dengue prevention checklist provided by the National Environmental Agency of Singapore to see how you can keep your environment mosquito-free.

Reference: Kasper et al (ed.) (2005) Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, 16th Ed., McGraw-Hill

The Interview For Medical School

This is in relation to the post I made just slightly earlier titled Communication.

There has been some debate going on in Monash Medical Student’s blog about the med school interview and I intend to discuss that for both future candidates and disgruntled individuals.

Most medical schools will require a personal interview with students before considering them for entry, in some cases, a telephone interview would be held. I am not a big fan of these interviews because I personally find them extremely nerve wrecking.

To speak the truth, I have never PREPARED for an interview. I’m not trying to blow my own trumpet here, it’s just that I never bothered to sit down for hours in preparation of one. Frankly, I did not fancy my own chances of entering med school upon comparison with my peers who prepared extensively for the interview. My idea of the interview was for the administration to find out who they might be admitting to their medical curriculum: not a quiz of knowledge and a test of eloquence.

Sadly, many times, this IS the case. The better prepared you are for an interview, the success rates would be better. If you’re considering a future in medicine and still have no gained admission, I would strongly suggest that you prepare for this elusive interview.

I sat 2 med school interviews out of the 3 schools that I applied for, one not requiring an interview. One of the interviews was conducted over telephone, the other was a face-to-face interview in front of a panel of interviewers.

I shall walk you through what the face-to-face interview was like: As with every other interview, they ask about your academic qualifications, motivation to be a doctor and co-curricular activites. I have had prior experience with ‘medicine’ in the form of being exposed to surgerys by virtue of my father’s job, as well as having paramedic training. All these came in handy; so I advise you to have some exposure to medicine. They also asked me to read an article. According to my peers, everyone got different articles. Mine was related to high cholesterol levels and IQ; following which, an question pertaining to medical ethics was asked. The last part of the interview was to get the interviewee to ‘detechnicalise’ a familiar chemistry term; ‘isotope’. I was dumbfounded and I just said that I would use the aid of a diagram to help me explain this term.

These components all have a purpose. The self-advertisement would show the interviewers your confidence and ability to initiate conversation in an unfamiliar setting. The ethical question was to test if you can appraise an article quickly and give your fair thoughts about it: this is an issue doctors face all the time; a patient enters with inaccurate information over the internet or needs ethical advice over it. The last part tests you ability to make jargon understandable: another problem faced by doctors everywhere. After 1.5 years in medical school, I find myself speaking in jargon alot more now but I still practise detechnicalising them to my friends who are not medical students.

This is unrelated to the debate going on in the abovementioned blog but has relations to my post on communication. Getting through the med school interview does not mean you are a good communicator, it just means you’re slightly better than the odd other candidate. This is definitely an area I must improve on.

For starters, I shall stop blogging and start talking to real people.

T-minus 40 years

In another 40 years, there could be no more fish left on earth. No i’m not kidding, apparently some French research say so.

Then there wouldn’t be a point in me going scuba diving anymore right? Damn right! So stop supporting mindless marine-life trade.

How is this going to happen? Trawlers and their massive nets just take whatever they can from the ocean, whether or not it can be sold. Sometimes this wipes out whole minor ecosystems within an area.

As medical people, we should know that genetic diversity, or at least ecological diversity, confers survivability to a species when living conditions change suddenly or drastically. Currently, there is no species of fish that is known to be able to survive in bits and pieces in your stomach or intestines.

Imagine, in 40 years, you go to the supermarket and you don’t see anymore ‘SEAFOOD’ sections. You open a menu and there is no more ‘marinara’ pasta. You walk down streets in Tokyo and they all say ‘RAMEN’ (not like you can read Japanese) instead of ‘SUSHI’.

First reactions: HOLY SHIT!!~

Damn right you should panic; don’t support irresponsible trawling – PLEASE.

I may not be fit enough to dive in 40 years, but think of our children and our children’s children. They might want to dive. Think about their jobs: they might wanna be hyperbaric chamber operators treating decompression sickness.

Take home message: Eat farmed fish, not deep sea tuna etc..

Reference: Layton J. 2006, Why would there be no more fish in 40 years? [Available online: http://science.howstuffworks.com/no-more-fish.htm Accessed: 15 June 2007]

Greetings

My first post.

I’ve deleted the other 2 blogs I had on blogspot.com because I wasn’t using them. However, encouraged by a friend, I decided to set one up on wordpress to discuss some of my very skewed views.

I don’t know where to start though, so I shall tell you abit more about what I PLAN to include in this blog; obviously, this will be influenced extensively by my areas of interest.

Discussions on all things medicine would be included, with a special look at infectious diseases and surgery. Since I play abit of golf, I plan to talk about some aspects of this great sport; including reviews for all the new courses that I have played at. Also some personal isses that have affected me recently and things close to home, such as Singaporean politics.

Also, this blog is maintained using a MacBook Pro! I am an avid supporter as of 2007. Mac has come up with some awesome stuff and I think it’s about time that all you people still using PC stuff switch to Mac, or at least consider a switch. Yes, I guess you can stay tuned for more posts related to the Mac-PC war brewing.