Friday, June 29, 2007
~ First Timer as a Surrogate Patient ~
10:27:00 pm
Believe it or not... It's been close to 30 hours since I've last laid my head on my pillow and drift off to slumberland... Yup, I've not slept for more than a day...
Just ended my night duty this morning... Only one word to sum up my night shift: Horrendous... Especially on my first two nights, I was preoccupied with my admissions and having patients who were ill... There were so many things to do and I was pacing up and down the ward almost throughout the whole shift... Last night was slightly better... At least I had time to sit down and rest for a while...
Headed back to my workplace again today around noon time... Well, not for work, of course... But as a surrogate patient for the candidates of the MRCP examination... MRCP examination is actually an exam for the medical officers (doctors) who are upgrading themselves to a Registrar level... And in order for the medical officers to be Registrars, they need to pass this examination...
I was being placed in Station 2 which was history-taking skills... Since this was my first time doing such a thing, I felt equally as nervous as the candidates... *Hehe*... One reason was because, I was afraid of misleading them to diagnose my case study to another diagnosis...
Together with me in the room were two Professors, one local (which I guess would be from NUS) and one foreigner from UK (since the MRCP is based in UK)... I was worried being in there with them since we would not have any common topic but they both turned out to be very friendly and warm people... And in fact, the Professor from UK is actually a Geriatrician so we actually managed to exchanged a few things regarding geriatric matters in our respective countries...
Knowing that this was my first time taking part in this MRCP, they gave me guides and tips on how to act like a 'real' patient... I was greatly nervous for the first candidate especially since he was such a soft-spoken medical officer... But soon, I began to get a hang of it... And what was nice about the two Professors were that each time after each candidate has left the room, they would tell me that I had done a great job and asked me about my opinion of each candidate (e.g. how impressive they were, were they precise and stuff)...
And what I enjoyed doing while being the surrogate patient was that I had forced the medical officers into revealing my diagnosis, so that I knew whether they had diagnosed me correctly... Lo and behold!! All of them had diagnosed my case study correctly!! *Clap clap*... Well, they had to, anyway... *Haha*...
At the end, I had enjoyed being a surrogate patient so much that one of the TTSH consultants involved had jokingly asked me to sign 'contract' to be a surrogate patient for the next 10 years... Very funny, HAHA!!
And the best part of all... $80 for being a surrogate patient for just 3-4 hours... I don't even earn this much on a weekend night shift!!
Labels: At Random
written, NaDiaH eRNiYaNTi
