After a short holiday break for Christmas, here’s a round-up of interesting posts we spotted in the Malaysian Medical Blogosphere.

Nocturnale tells of an interesting experience in the ER

One case was in particular illustrative of the unique experience of working in the ER. A 35-year-old Chinese gentleman, recently diagnosed of gastric adenocarcinoma, was brought in escorted by his GP with a complaint of two episodes of vomiting of blood an hour prior to presentation. What impressed me was how the GP actually took an active part in resuscitating the patient. He was wearing a glove, setting up a drip, and doing his gigs like nobody’s business! Later, when I had time to reflect on this, I wonder if the bland and dull hours of primary care hadn’t in fact taken a toll on him so much so that any exciting aberrancy however trivial from his practice would be a welcome succor in his monotonous world of treating coughs and colds.

A GP accompanying a patient to the ER and even participating in the resus. I think that’s a rarity these days but it’s nice to hear that! Btw, nice photos of Kota Bahru. I like that mini-slideshow thingy. Did you try Yati’s Ayam Percik? Yum yum!

George does a little discourse about Uterine Fibroids. Not bad for a non-ObGyn! For great instructive pictures in medicine, Shah takes you through Combined Spinal Epidural (CSE) anaesthesia. Those sitting for the MRCP should take a look at PACES MRCP’s pictorial on Hyperpigmentation
For some gory pictures of Rectal Cancer, Bernard has posted some fine pics.
George also has another photo quiz for you. And no, it’s not a piece of “chicken chop” and a pair of chopsticks.

When we work on-call as a team, when times are extraordinarily busy, sometimes we blame (in a light hearted manner, and usually junior members) some members of the team as being “Jonahs” – those bringing bad luck. I guess doctors can be superstitious too hehe – bad luck, things happening in three’s. Don’t believe me? Take a look at Ain who talks about Luck. Nice pic of Scarlett but the bgm doesn’t work
Housemanship may be tough when you start off – it can be very hectic as our Magician Doctor found out. No amount of knowledge learned during Uni days can help you much with the number of cases to clerk and tons of procedures and paperwork to do. You just gotta do it (yup like Nike says) and you’ll learn things the hard way and things will improve as you become more street-wise. But there are nice little things like receiving your first pay check!. As Doc Del and Steve found out. So many things to buy and really it could be a bigger pay packet huh? With salary comes responsibility too (apologies to Spiderman).
Take heart that all these are the aches and pains of the Growing Up process, something that starts even in medical school, as YP found out.

Doctors need to practice what they preach. When it comes to recommending exercise, how many actually do so themselves? Shah mentions how he had a Gym membership but lapsed. I confess that I myself belong to the “lapsed” category. I envy our Tridoc who can still do a sub-30 second 50m swim!

Fang touches on the unaddressed issue of foreign workers having to pay triple for medical treatment in Malaysia. In the case of maids it means coming out of the employer’s pocket. I recently encountered an employer who wisely bought medical insurance for his Indonesian maid who presented with enlarged neck glands. She had a lymph node biopsy and in the end it turned out to be tuberculosis. The message is I think medical insurance should be compulsory for foreign workers, then we won’t have this problem of who pays for the treatment (employer or tax payers)

Xian brings up the important question: Does a paediatric patient’s parents always know best? Unfortunately not. Treatment of bilateral inguinal hernia with herbs? What nonsense. Paediatric hernias are nowadays easily corrected surgically. They are most unlikely to close on their own. Will the child suffer from incarcerated or a strangulated hernia? This carries risk of morbidity and even death. How will the parents feel then? They made an informed choice -unfortunately it was the wrong one.

Sbanboy laments the fact that there are No more Thank you‘s. I agree. Many people have forgotten the act of saying “Thank you”. It’s not just in hospitals (public and private) but in many situations in everyday life. People go on about their busy lives and the world revolves just around them. They forget simple acts of courtesy and kindness and take many many things for granted. A thank you and a smile will go a long way. Certainly will make any doctor’s day I tell you.
How do you go about changing this? Well, Hidden Stream has a great philosophical message (and wonderful paintings to share too) for all of you out there – those of you who read and write blogs.

You can choose to invite peace into your heart or feel lost amidst the chaos that envelops our hyperactive world esp during this end of the year holiday season. Right in the middle of the midnight countdown to Christmas Day, amid the shouting, the clapping, the blaring and the balloon popping, I was doing a little reflective prayer on my own, standing there among the crowd of revellers and happy children. This is the best gift you can give to yourself. Nothing, not even the tidal waves, can destroy your peace, if you do not allow it to happen.
If you are among the millions of bloggers who are writing for a better world, remember that change comes from within.

Of course our medical blogs are not a major path towards change. However I believe they do play a significant role in the social web to create awareness, to educate, to encourage and at times to inspire. I thank everyone for their wonderful efforts. Keep on blogging people! We may or may not be able to change the world, but if we do, hopefully it will be for the better.

Last 5 posts by Palmdoc

• Doctors gone wild again - September 1st, 2010
• Tools of the trade XIX - September 1st, 2010
• Feedback: Housemanship - August 31st, 2010
• Merdeka!! - August 31st, 2010
• The things lawyers say - August 18th, 2010

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 28th, 2006 at 1:29 pm and is filed under - Blog rounds, - Palmdoc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.