Hospital

So i've already started my shadowing in the hospital (so far for three days). I will be shadowing in the GPs, O and G, Paediatric, Surgery and Physician departments over the two months i'm here. To start with i'm shadowing in the GP area of the hospital, which also includes the treatment room. And in the 3 days i've been doing so i've already witnessed quite a few things.

On the first day I spent a bit of time in the O and G part of the hospital watching a few checkups being done on expectant mothers and their babies. The scanner they used was able to display the baby in 4D (which is just 3D but in realtime rather than being only able to view snapshots of the baby). I also got to see a birth and a dead baby being induced (as it had died quite early in the pregnancy and the mother wanted it out straight away rather than waiting for it to come out naturally). I had to hold the womans hand to try and keep it still and grip it quite tight so that the veins would be more exposed and therefore it would be easier to inject the anaesthetic.

Then I went down to the treatment part of the hospital where I saw quite a few things. For example there was a girl being treated for an astma attack, a blood test being taken to test for suspected dengue fever and a man having some bad grazes cleaned and bandaged (he had been knocked off his motorbike by a taxi).

On the second day I shadowed a bit in a GP's office. Most of the cases were either people suffering from gastro-enthritis (and therefore having to have an intra-muscular injection), more people having blood tests to test for dengue fever (theres currently a bit of an epidemic here), a baby having a check up as, when he was born, he had jaundice, a little boy who had an infection of the respiratory tract and a nurse having a hepititis B vaccination (although I found out here, unlike in the UK, hepititis B is actually found quite often in Asian people even when they have not been exposed to any of the hep. B risk factors and therefore most children get vaccinated).

In the afternoon I was back in the treatment room watching stitches being taken out from just above a little boys eyebrow (I had to hold the boys head still while the stitches were taken out) and there was also a man who had diabetes. He had gotten an ulcer on his leg as a result of not being careful with his diet and, having finally come off, the underlying flesh had to be cleaned with all the puss removed and then the leg bandaged up.

On the third day I was shadowing a GP and the cases were just a few throat infections and someone with acute conjunctivitis.

Its been good as, whilst shadowing, the doctors have been telling me interesting little bits of info. For example, i'm being told about differences in the culture in Malaysia which may result in different advice having to be given to some patients. Also i've seen a lot of people who have dengue fever, a disease thats endemic here but not in the UK, having blood tests to check up on how bad it is. This is interesting to me both because I find infectious diseases interesting (dengue fever being an infectious disease transmitted by the Aedis mosquito) and also because its an example of me being exposed to diseases I wouldn't see in a UK hospital. Also i've been shown how to carry out a few simple procedures such as checking a pulse (which I did kind of already know but they gave a few tips to make it easier) and listening to either the heartbeat or lungs to see if they're functioning properly (listening to the lungs allows you to hear the weezing of astma sufferers) using stethoscopes as well as being shown all the different drugs, equipment and how the different machinery works.

So its been a pretty cool start already!

I shall be properly starting in the hospital next Tuesday. Now i'm going to celebrate Hari Raya and won't have internet for a week as I said in the previous blog entry. So don't expect an update any time soon.