Students' Self-reflection on their Anaesthesia Rotation

So, we have just put all the response from 5th year medical students who were with us for their working with us. Hopefully, their skills which can be beneficial elsewhere in the hospital will be better and better with they grow up and gain more experience in patient care.

There is also some competencies about the situation they have to make up their mind what to do or not to do, and their interests in choosing anaesthesia as their future career.

Thanks for your kind co-operation to respond to the survey, so that we can improve ourselves to suit you all much better.

Preoperative evaluation and Preparation

It is the heart of anaesthesia for medical students, if you do not have an anaesthetic mind during your surgical rotation, you would definitely not understand why your patient is in need for such investigations, and medication concerned. You have to have holistic mind so that you would not only focus on how the surgical diagnosis would be made and the steps of surgical procedure in your patient would be, if you throughoutly look after your patient, you will not lack the core of medicine in your patient and it would definitely bring you another world when surgery and medicine are met and walk along with each other.

Preoperative evaluation skills are just comparable to the skills you have already had when you perform ward round in every discipline of medicine, for a quick look from head to toe, then you can focus the leading cause of your patient hospitalisation for this admission and focus of what else he/she has in the topic of concurrent diseases. It should be a skill every MD graduate can perform by self with no need for consultation, such as hypertension, asthma, diabetes, etc.

Outcome first then Process

Yesterday we joined the faculty meeting for the curriculum improvement for medical student. Actually we were still by the process we were informed in the morning. Everyone expected to discuss how the curriculum would be changed, how to rearrange the slot for teaching, unfortunately we were nowhere, repeated the same process which happened last April.

We were grouped together to discuss how we expect a medical graduate would be, or discussion on the outcome we would love to see at the time they would graduate, the committee had given us 27 items of how we expected to see them which was too much and exaggerated, therefore, each group did the grouping of 27 items to less than 5 or 6 headers, according to the university motto as well as the faculty motto.

Then in the afternoon we discussed the main outcomes in six domains which has been announced by the Thai Medical Council. Our team from the department was quite disappointed with yesterday meeting, as we are anaesthetists, so we have to act fast and sharp and of course safe. Will update this topic again because it would be ended in a year time or longer than that because it will be used for the Academic year 2558 when they arrive our faculty as 2nd year medical students.

Responsible or Sensible???

Finally the process of grade decision has come to a close, we have just finished a report back to the faculty. The problem we have found is an episode of a student misconduct, no! she/he is not cheated, but she/he should be more self-love according to Today Valentine's Day.

Self-love can be interpreted as more responsible to the work assigned to each of everyone, if your work or assignment is done, there should be a sign to your mentor/ consultant/ attending whatever it is for you. In order to get a feedback to you, you must be professional enough to accept other opinions especially if it means to help improve you in the future. It can be the meaning of sensible things you should proceed as well, it appears to be a normal way it should be and no-one would not have to shout it out. If one has chosen not to follow that path, one should be prepared to be ready for what would happen after that.

What is the reason why??

We are in the process of searching what the reason for medical students to earn the A grade from our department would be, because we are just short period subject so the effect from score in both MCQ or essay would not be so much impact. We see quite comparable scores from the whole class in both exam. So, the other causes can be a report which used to be a written patient case study, but we have changed to oral presentation format, the next reason can be participation of each single student during their problem based learning activities, and the final reason can be bed side teaching during working in the operating theatres.

We will update this later on when we can find it.

Decision making or a Judgement Day

We are in the final process of Academic year 2555, we are doing the grade making for each medical student. Indeed the grade earning and giving can be manipulated not too rigid and strict to the rule or scale. It can be adjusted to give the learner higher benefit.

Sometimes it is quite difficult to choose to give or not to give the learner higher score in order to shift their grade up a level, so hard to perform that.

It is going to finalise soon, so there will be some with smile on their faces, and some would receive just an OK, hopefully.

A call 4 Help

You have just extubated your patient after an operation he required was done, have you performed the right thing or you are going to harm him?

First of all you have to re-evaluate his condition, diagnose the main problem then you can correct the pathology or the cause of the problem he is really in need and waiting for your hands to manage it.

So, what you are going to do for him?

Absolutely not Minor!!

For medical students and new medical graduates or young doctors, if you are in the process of decision making to become an anaesthetist in the near future, you have to understand and know what we are routinely doing for each single day. When you are doing your anaesthetics rotation, you may get some happy time because you have participated in the patient care, you can perform some skills by your hands which is totally different from other specialties which you become an observer and distant yourself from the care process.

You have to realise that you will not receive an ASA 1 every single day, when you are working with your supervisor, we can manipulate the surgical list to match the competency of medical students, so it is also not the real world. Working in an operating theatre should be paired to an ICU bed, imagine you are performing shock resuscitation, close monitoring, airway and ventilator support, and more for your patient, it is like that the anaesthesia world.

We are just worried that you have chosen us, the specialty, because you have thought that it is not hardworking, it is fun and thought that even the nurse can perform why can't I? You are misunderstanding something dear. If you think you can work in an ICU environment for every single day for the rest of your life, this challenging world is calling for you, dear.

Time Flies so fast!!

Tomorrow friday Feb 8th  will be the last day of the academic year 2555-2556 in the Faculty, they will have an intensive course so that they will be ready to work and learn as their final senior year.

The Simulation teaching will be one and a half years old, and will continue to utilise this technique for the learning process, we have heard that some departments have already started to teach our med students with this method too, and it should be because the learners should have more practices and this technique they can learn from nothing, from mistakes, from misunderstanding, because we can repeat the scenario as many times as they'd love to.

Next Friday 15th, the faculty will organise a very first meeting about what we should move for the new medical student curriculum towards the 21st century and also the ASEAN community integration.

So, it will be time period to repeat again because newcomers will due to arrive to the department on Mon 18th, we will meet and greet and prepare the MCQ papers, essays, revise the simulation and arrange the rotation for them.