Monday, April 4, 2011

Break-it-up

I have a load of uni work that is quickly piling up into a mountain. 11 weeks into the (17-week) semester, I'm thinkin', "crap! what have I been doing all this time?!"

Doesn't help that, mentally, I just want to cruise through this year and put in the bare-minimum of effort required to scrape through. Still, it's dawning on me, "scraping through" still requires public health assignments to be handed in; journal club papers to be presented; and short-cases to be reviewed. Urgh!

One of the habits I've had to get back into practicing, is breaking tasks up into bite-size chunks, and chipping away at a seemingly overwhelming workload one bit at a time.

God that I wish for this year to pass painlessly! Pleeeease!!

In other news, today as I was walking to the train-station, I found myself becoming a nosy-onlooker at the scene of a car vs pedestrian accident. I watched with much apprehension as the ambos scooped up this poor semi-conscious woman (who was just innocently minding her own business, crossing the road at a pedestrian crossing, as you do..) and whizzed her off to hospital. I considered for a brief second running back up to the hospital (I assume they would have taken her to my clinical school hosp; which was only a few hundred metres from the scene of the accident); checking out her management in the ED and seeing that she was okay. But the sight of the pool of blood that was left on the road from her open head injury made me feel quite queasy.. and honestly, I decided that I preferred not to know the outcome, if there was a chance that it was going to be a bad one. *Shudder!* Anyway, I now have a renewed sense of utmost respect and admiration for ambulance officers.

Okay, enough said - time to hit the books!

2 comments:

  1. I feel the same way.

    There's so much to be done and I haven't touched any of it. Our predicament reminds me of a book I was reading about a person going through Harvard Med School.

    She wrote: "I'm a final year student and standing next to the intern, I was wondering what the difference was until it became apparent to me. I was paying $20,000 to have the privilege of learning from the hospital and the intern was getting paid $50,000 to practice there."

    I think that you are care and service to the patients that you see is a form of study. Sadly, it's not really that much examinable.

    One way or another, things will work out. They always seem to.

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  2. That's so true with that Harvard student comparison! I wish we did get credit for time spent and participation in our clincal activities. It would seem like the logical thing, right?!

    But you're so right too - things DO work out in the end; it's the way of the world for them to do so... otherwise we'd all be stuck in a rut, going no where.

    Peace dude.

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