Day #1 of Paeds posting

Selamat kembali ke sekolah! Hari ni first day of Paediatrics posting. I was not fully prepared for this day actually. Flipped a few pages of my precious Lissauer's Paeds book and went to bed straight away. Haha. My first day started with an introduction lecture, continued with General Overview of what Paeds is all about. Biasalah, kalau lecture ni memang selalu boring. Dok lah bersengkang mata dan mendengar dengan teliti apa yang disampaikan.

Lepas lecture, kita orang disajikan dengan bedside teaching, my favourite way of learning since I get to concentrate more on what is being delivered to me. Yelah. Takkan nak slack sebab consultant akan betul-betul mengadap kita and ajar satu persatu. But actually scary jugaklah sebab selalunya akan kena attack with questions questions questions! There was one question that I managed to answer correctly but the doctor didn't hear me I guess. He was asking the importance of knowing the gender of the child. And I answered hemophilia, which is a sex-linked blood disorder, predominantly in male patients. Tapi doctor tak dengar sebab bila orang sebelah jawab hemophilia, dia kena puji. Tak aci. Tiruuuu jawapan gua. Cis tak guna. Haha.

Sangat suka bedside teaching hari ini. Hope I can remember all the theories that I got today for as long as I live. Okay, gila nerd bunyi dia kan. =P Just for a reminder for myself, there are five major causes of pale in children:

1. Aplastic anemia
2. Hemolytic anemia
3. Iron-deficiency anemia
4. Bleeding
5. Malignancy (eg. leukemia)

I'm not sure if there's more but that's all what I got from today's bedside teaching. The consultant taught us how to make a working diagnosis and rule out the others. The patient that I met today was a 7-year old girl, suffering from ALL (Acute lymphoblastic leukemia) since she was three. Annnddd it turned out that her name is Mira. What a coincidence. The child's father was very co-operative and I was VERY VERY surprised on how VERY well-informed he is about his daughter's condition. He knew all the medical terms and conditions related to his daughter's disease. I was in awe, listening to the things that he knew.

And you know what, that made me realise. You gotta really understand your patients well and in return you should let know the important info that the patients should know. If you don't master the disease, how are you  supposed to do that? 

Okay, that reminds me to go and study now. Bye!