My blog is three years old today... with the first post being written on a Wednesday to herald the start of the Y4J Lenten talks Let's Face It back in 2007. And here I am typing the 80th entry today three years later.Mind you, there was much to type and harp about these last couple of months, with the most tempting topic being the saga featuring the rattle snake Daphne Caruana Galizia crossing swords with the woman looking "like a cross between Worzel Gummidge and the back of a bus" i.e. Consuelo Scerri Herrera (a.k.a Consie). When the medicine and surgery starts getting dreary, I just find myself trying to get the latest scoop from her blog. Yes it's rude, crude, raw and quite off putting for some readers but I find the raw honesty and crudeness way too entertaining. Thank God there is no Wifi in our lecture rooms!
Then there are the more internal issues that people outside the world of medical school will find very boresome to read; and in my opinion, anything that doesn't keep people entertained is just not worth penning down at all! Thing is... Not knowing who your readers are makes it difficult to keep them entertained, isn't it? Blogs are usually faithfully followed by "friends", a word that I have to unfortunately use in inverted commas.
Friendships at medical school was something I never really had problems with (until recently). Friendships in community, admittedly, is a totally different matter for reasons that are numerous and multi-factorial (for example, me not turning up to meetings since before Christmas doesn't help the situation at all).
But now, with less than 3 months to go for the final exams, people at medical school really and truly change in the face of fierce competition... Including so-called "friends". I was lucky to have seen this coming from miles away. Any longsighted individual would have had a taste of "what is to come in 5th year" last year. All that had to be done was have Prof. Charles Savona Ventura dish out a logbook to a class of 60 students to complete in 7 weeks, and what do you get? Colleagues fighting and back stabbing each other over mothers giving birth as though these poor mothers are pieces of fish in a lake of killer whales... All so that they'll get their obstetrics and gynaecology logbook over and done with on time with the least amount of hassle (there would be pathology text books waiting for us at home).
And that was just a prodrome! Now, we're getting patients complaining that their abdomen has been palpated as though under a hand presser made of steel, just so that they can possibly get a feel for his small difficult-to-detect polycystic kidneys... Even if it has to take them 1.5 hours of the patients time and agony! Such students are few. The majority are quite a polite and considerate bunch. But unfortuantely, when they come with the best of their bedside manners, they would still be greeted with a disappointing:
"Ħaqq il-medical students li ħalaq Alla!"
And this wouldn't be from a typical Maltese qattani! Because when the house officer convinces the patient, "They just want to feel your loin. They have exams in 3 months", iż-żejt jitla’ f’ wiċċ l-ilma and his side of the story comes out as though he would have just been given three drops of truth potion.
There were other stories of the sort... like students crouching with their ophthalmoscopes seven at a time to see a poor blind man with Retinitis Pigmentosa whilst waiting for his transfer at an old people's institution. He was a very nice man but, fl-aħħar, he had had enough! And I don't blame him in the slightest! (Even though I didnt' get to see him.)
And your friend asks you for patients. You give him/her a couple. Then you'd expect him/her to return the favour. Wara kollox, kull qalb trid oħra... mhux hekk? And two things may happen...
1) Your "friend" may either just walk away and not give you anything.
2) Your "friend" will purposely send you the patients who are "social cases" with no findings, discharged a week ago or they send you to take a "good history" from someone who is deaf...
And this is just in a class of 57 5th years. I cannot even begin to imagine what the situation will be like in 4 years time when the 5th year class will be a 130!
