You’ve Got Mail

Hi,

I have read your recent post about mainlanders in your blog (well i have to say i am one of your many silent readers lol). I heartfeltly agree, and I felt myself going into a wrong profession as i didn’t expect our society to deteiorate so rapidly. My aspiration of being a doctor came from the perceived satisfaction in helping a patient. But it seems the chance is that when i start my practice, i will more likely see a patient who demands service, than one who seeks help from us with gratitude. That’s sad. What are your ideas towards this? To accept? To get private once one is capable? (i do hope i stay public, to help more patients in need) To emigrate? Any thoughts mind sharing with a puzzled junior?

Cheers,
A

p.s. i was really touched when i saw that thank you note you got from your patient! 萬分佩服! i hope i could get one some day in the future.

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Dear A

Thank you for your letter and this chance to respond to your thoughts. I’m sure as colleagues, we share the same frustration towards the kind of situation that we are facing right now, but more importantly, even more so than finding solutions to these problems, I want you to recognize that you had not entered a wrong profession at all – there is no bigger defeat than abandoning yourself, your faith and your determination altogether too soon, and a career in medicine is almost always rewarding in many sense if only you persist.

Honestly, being a doctor is the merriest thing that ever happened to me, and working in a specialty that I enjoy most is a huge stroke of luck indeed. Although there must be tough moments of disappointment at our current healthcare system, or how our society is changing for better or worse, there are certainly way more fun, satisfaction and meanings in the journey of a doctor.

In my humble opinion, the best solution for me to deal with this is to concentrate on delivering the best, of my capacity and ability, at every opportunity, to help, to be courteous while you learn to serve the sick people. Many a times I’m both humbled and amused by the wealth of stories that I heard from patients who entered my door or whom I met in the wards. My life experience grew enormously with their words of advice and sharing of wisdom, and bearing in mind that as trainees we do learn from our patients – their response and their feedbacks are the best guide to knowing the effectiveness of your treatment, or the surgery that you perform on them – textbooks or papers do not give you this, only real people do.

Remember, in moments of doubts, don’t let anybody else alter your conscience as to who you are and how you value yourself, as a student in medicine or a doctor alike. Yes some patients may not be easy to handle at the first encounter, but if you give them enough time and if you really try to understand their situations, you might realise their attitude would change too.

In fact in Hong Kong, there ARE still many grateful patients around who do not only appreciate what you have done, but also they understand your limitations (of what you COULD NOT have done) too, especially when you are a junior like me. Those are the times that I would wish so badly for an extension in my abilities, instead of worrying about how I am not going to meet their ‘demands’ in providing my ‘services’.

It’s perhaps very hard to describe to you, with my limited English vocabulary, the good feelings of building a respectful patient-doctor relationship, which involves plenty of trust and care. But I guarantee you soon enough you will have a first taste of that pleasant connection during your internship – despite all those sleepless nights and weariness from a hundred calls.

As to public VS private – well like any other relationship, whenever money is involved, it becomes more complicated. As interns, you’ll have your chances meeting some private patients (should you rotate in QM) and you’ll see how different they are from the public group of patients. Mind you, these people are actually paying for your service – they want their money’s worth, at least that is what they think their cash could do. Their tolerance was understandably low in case of things that go against their way, and whoever taking their money are required / expected to give not only an okay outcome, but the most perfect result that is sometimes beyond the power / realm of medicine. It might be too early for you to commit yourself into private practice before you even start your training. Anyhow you are going to spend a few more years in the public (unless you want to become a GP), so why not take the best out of your time in the public sector? and that now the system is crumbling, wouldn’t you want yourself to be the one who stay and fight for the ones who need your help?

Having said that, I do not reject or detest the idea of private practice. I just simply think that for every stage in life, our thoughts and perceptions change and evolve with the environment around us. Our demand for different sorts of experience arises and there are new impulses which will take us to our life’s next arena. But the same principles of who you are should stick. Well let me wish you the strength to find yours in the years to come.

Best regards,

AK

Life is too short

Tonight, a colleague of my uncle whom I didn’t know, collapsed and died at the Disneyland. My uncle recalled seeing him just before the show started, but only moments later, bad news came and another life was taken away by a merciless heart attack.

At times like such, one can’t help but wonder how feeble and vulnerable it is to be alive, and how grateful one should be to be free from any sort of illnesses, to be seeing people whom you love around when you wake up the next morning, to be said hello to by your colleagues at work after a long weekend.

But as you look around, and you look at the world of people competing against each other every day and in every single way. Why is the world so hostile that people would worry about getting hurt by somebody else? Why are people competing against each other when instead the only person for you to beat is your old self.

Can we let go of our hatred and feel good about what we already own? Greed is a mistake, greed is a sin.

May the man find rest in peace.

Lea Salonga

Come join us :) ASAP!

The following message goes to all M09 (or above) colleagues,

Have you ever thought about treating eye diseases with lasers and cool operations? Now it’s perfect time to reconsider joining this unique and specialized career in our hospital! If you share our interest in ophthalmology and are looking for a change in your working environment, please approach me ASAP on Facebook / via email.

ACT NOW AND TAKE YOUR CHANCES!

Feel Thy Laser, You Shall.

Video Of The Week: 記者：「咁你出嚟做乜嘢？」

講多無謂，睇片最實際 ﹣精「警」片段 ﹣由0:47開始

誠然，這個世界上的確存在了許多「出左嚟」但又唔知自己「做乜野」的人，連問問題最利害的記者都忍不佳燥了，枉人家一早set定十幾支咪苦苦等候你出場呢，既然都知道是個不能說的秘密的話，哪麼就乾脆別浪費人家時間吧。

If I were an IVY Leaguer

The month I interned in New York was probably the closest I could ever get to becoming part of an IVY league, sharing a flat in one of Columbia’s nursery-turned dormitory on 168th street and hitting the students’ gym every night, made me feel like a regular undergrad of this vibrant college. During the four week attachment in Presbyterian Hospital and their Eye Institute, I had the opportunity to work with some of their finest current students as well as elite doctors who were either alumni or graduates from other IVY league med schools. From their eyes I could almost always see a proud spirit of their college, a sense of belonging and a sense of attachment to their beloved alma maters. This is exactly what I don’t see amongst graduates in Hong Kong – even those who finished their degrees with honours, our local alumni seem a lot more nonchalant towards their own schools compared to our American counterparts. In fact if you ask me, I really liked those people I met in Columbia and I could not tell you how much I appreciated the way they were ruthlessly aggressive in their careers, their competitiveness at work, or sports, or anything as long as there exists comparisons, the heated ambience was totally suffocatingly impressive.

Sometimes I think this was the exact kind of environment that could produce the next generations of giants like Steve Jobs (though he actually quitted his college education half-way through), it was the dedication to something they would die fighting for and the dead seriousness about upholding their interests and ambitions which made them better than all other competitors in the market. I had once sit in some of their tutorials and observed an interesting fact – if you only compare by the ability to memorize facts and figures, these students would not have performed half as well as many of our local secondary school kids, but if you would also count on their ability to express their ideas, the logic behind their thoughts, and their determination and motivation to seek the best answers (and not the model answers) would have completely trumped most if not all of our local college students.

Of course there are always exceptions for arguments, and perhaps the samples I viewed was perhaps by chance biased or skewed towards the genius side, but I could reassure you that definitely a larger proportion of these IVY students were passionate about being one of the millions who studied in these colleges, and that i believe in turn play a role in sculpting the elitism culture across the entire IVY league.

As a late local alumnus of one of our local universities, I could only read from history about our past glory as the topmost institution in Hong Kong and feel sorry for the slip in terms of quality of education as well as our students. I genuinely hope that one day, with the help of increasingly frequent international exchange and the coming back of overseas graduates, we could reignite a similar culture in our local academia and grace our future generations, for they shall become the pillars of our society one day.

To Sink Or To Swim: Step One For All Ophthalmologist-wannabe!

Found this funny video online at rootaltas.com that explains how a modern slitlamp is constructed and the proper way of using it in a day in and day out examination of the eye.  Better learn how to swim before we are thrown into the clinic and sink!

Slit Lamp Eye Exam from Root Atlas on Vimeo.