confused...

8-MARCH. A rainy day like this would be so nice for me to catch my zzzzz's. However, during holidays, i always lost my mood to do so even with cool weather as i have been sleeping too much. THere is an old saying : you'll only appreciate something that you have just lost it or something that is very hard to achieve. Likewise, during study week, how much i wish i can have a good night sleep or a long and sweet nap. But now,...

As a medical student, sometimes i can be more confused than the patients. Because sometime we were taught differently by different lecturers or not surprisingly the same one. haha. Below were some of the typical examples.

"You are medical student you know??you are different from other student (e.g business, law,education...).We expect you to be better as you are the future doctor. You must be confident with yourself."

On the contrary, "You are nothing. You are just a medical student. YOu will be scolded by people senior than you(e.g houseman,MO,registrar,specialist) until you become a consultant. THat's a vry vry long way to go..."

Sometime we were taught to use medical terms : "To be more professional, you should use medical terms so that evry1 can understand."

Other time :" Don't use medical term, use the words that the patient tell you. DOn't try to change whenevr you like."

Even worse when:" No no no, you are not reporters, I want you to be detective. Don't report evrything to me. Be smart, digest only present to me."

Ok, so we were asked to use medical term and also patient's words but must be careful in order to reach a balance. If you use too much patient's words, you are not professional enough and you act only like a reporters. If you use too much medical terms, you lost the meaning given by the patient, you mislead evry1. very confusing right??

"I give you ten minutes to take the history. you must train yourself to be fast.you dun hav time during emergency." Ok, so to be fast i shall ask close ended question like "Do you have chest pain?" "Does the pain radiates?" " Is the pain burning, pressing, crushing...?"

"No....you shall ask open ended question" Yeah, i know but it's very slow. For example, :"HOw's the pain?"

Wow the answer can be very broad. It's ok if the patient can describe properly but most of them would be "painla" "dunno" "vry painful" they won't say: "doctor it's crushing in nature radiating to the shoulder."

A balance between black and white is gray. But the problem now is we need to achieve a balance between the white and white. sounds hard?? that's MEDICINE.