New Beginning

Today (i.e. in 8 hours time) is a big day for me.
Since the first day I step into the medical school, today has been what I have been looking forward to-- Clinical Clerkship.

Yes, I am starting my Junior Medical Clerkship today. For those who don't know, clerkship basically means learning through rotations in different wards in the hospitals. Tomorrow, I will be a doctor-in-training in ward 9AB of Prince of Wales Hospital.

Though I have been looking forward to this for really long time, I don't feel pretty nervous now. Perhaps the previous occupation in the organization of the AMSC has been to exhausting that I do not have time yet to look at the whole clerkship thing seriously. And perhaps I am not fully prepared for the clerkship yet too.

Clerkship is an important stepping stone to a medical student (MS). It marks the conversion from a preclinical student to a clinical student. It embarks a learning process which MS have to learn by active participation in daily running of the ward, instead of passive sitting and recitition of lecture materials. It also means that your learning process will be actively monitored by MOs and Profs in the ward--and should we be not proficient enough with our knowledge, they will make sure that we feel ashamed of ourselves. Clerkship also remarks the beginning of interaction with patients in the wards. And this is what medicine is about after all-- we finally take the leap from lecture notes and tutorial papers to the real life. The real life is not going to be easy- and in fact, will be pretty tough and demanding. Yet, this is why medicine is so fabulous.

The blog is established to remember this transection-- from a medical student to a doctor to-be. Ward life means busy life. Yet, I am expecting inspiration and emotional challenge from time to time. And this blog is made for me to record these remarkable events that hopefully, finally, will train me from a naive MS to a mature house officer (if I managed to graduate, of course). This blod, unlike my another blog, will not be a record of my daily life/emotions, but rather inspirations of my daily education in medicine.

No. I am not planning to make a big deal of the establishment of this blog. I rather this blog to be a quiet place for those who accidently come across this by chance, and among those, people who decided to share my life experience. I thank you for your sharing in advance.

I am not sure if I will be a good doc., but I will be my best to be a caring, empathetic and holistic doctor-in-training.