I did my summer internship at this hospital last month.
I did ponteng a few times but I had a good enough excuse which i shall not disclose here.
It's not half bad actually.
I hung out mostly in ward number 3 with a really sarcastic doctor whose name I shall not disclose here. An orang luar i'd imagine so he doesn't speak 'terengganu' and he has no idea what Tioxide and Lot 144 is (tsk tsk).But you can tell he's a really respected doctor. And unlike the other doctors he actually acknowledged my existence and bullied me around. Which is good at times.
He even asked me how many lungs the human body has. It was all good natured ribbing.
I did learn quite a lot.
The hospital is really calm cause most special cases don't get admitted there, it's always been that way. Not enough equipment I guess,cause I believe the expertise is there.
Anyways,I now know how to differentiate a vein from an artery using an ultrasound machine.
I know where you're supposed to put the little knob things on the patient when doing an ECG.
I know how to wash your hands properly using the 7 steps and I know that when you're opening stitches, you have to cut the 'thread' from the sides so it wouldn't hurt the patient much when you pull it out. Not that I got to do any of that. It's all the government policy. I get it. I wouldn't want first year medical students to touch me if I was the patient either.
And I learned about the administrative structure of the hospital, basic stuff like that.
The hospital is only now just starting to accept housemen so the staff are all really excited about it.
They're all really nice to the housemen,none of all the nightmarish 'bekeng' nurses and matron stories. and the doctor recommended me to do my housemanship at Hosiptal Kemaman cause he said teaching hospitals are usually overcrowded so they don't allow housemen to do anything. Like,in a team, there's usually two specialists,two medical officers,two residents and a few house officers. So of course, the residents and medical officers will only let the housemen observe most of the cases. But in Hospital Kemaman, there's one specialist,one MO and two housemen in a team. So you can imagine the difference.
Hospital Kemaman is supposed to get a new building soon I was told. A bigger one with more sub-specialties and departments. Right now, there's only one ward for male patients. that means all the cases for males are in that ward. No different ward for orthopedics or infectious diseases. But it's all good.
At least I got to see all the cases in one ward.
It was a good experience. But I just wish I didn't have to go through it again all by myself next year.
-The Chukai Insider