grateful

we pay 6000 USd per semester. the regular program students pay less than 100USd per semester.

imagine paying 6000USd per semester just to have midwives telling you, "here are the medical records, make sure the patient's name and medical record number are written on every single piece of paper, all the way from the payment form to the discharge form". then they go off and deliver babies.

seriously WTF.

anyway, despite the fact that i'm always doing menial job, or jobs that are less than menial, such as fetching xrays from the lab and sending urine samples to the lab, i guess there are still things to be thankful for.

like the many interesting cases we get. we get to SEE patients and we have INTERNET to search about how to diagnose and treat the patient. beats the purpose of having doctors who are supposed to teach us, but well, they are busy saving lifes and we have to be independent.

anyway, i'm grateful for the little moments in life. Like seeing a patient who has end stage cancer and maggots falling out from her tumor onto the floor. Like having patients who believe they shouldnt shower when they are sick, so for a week the whole ward stink like crazy. Like meeting incredible parents who could still crack jokes when their kid has cancer. Like a man who laughs and cheerfully tells u to enjoy life when he cant even get out of bed. Like seeing a patient who looked like she was pregnant but actually had hydronephrosis. Like seeing a patient with elephantiasis. Like having a patient who was under your care die due to kidney failure. The cases we get that can't be found anywhere else, from Henoch Schonlein Purpura, Steven Johnson syndrome, TENS, Cantrell syndrome, Weil's disease, dengue, typhoid, malaria, MRSA, leprosy, HIV to TB.

the moments with my groupmates who sometimes make me want to smack myself on the wall, the moments when we 'bolos' on call or normal duty, the times we curi go out just to eat, the signatures we forged, the complaining sessions, little things in life.

so yes, i may get annoyed and angry and disappointed, but underneath it all, i am grateful i have the chance to live through all this. =)

regrets

Studying medicine in indonesia is not a good choice.

In a month's time, i will have stayed in Indonesia for 5 years. Indonesia is interesting, its fun, its people are friendly and nice, food is plenty. For medicine-diseases are abundant, patients are never ending, hospitals are many.

BUT.

The amount of bureaucratic crap you have to go through when you are a koas (co-assistant/ medical student doing clinical rotation) denies you the opportunity to learn. Yes, there are around 40 patients a day in a polyclinic. But what's the use of having so many patients when you wait for a doctor from 8-9am so that he can have case reflection with you from 9-11am, then lunch break, then you attend journal reading or resident's case presentation from 12-2pm? when you actually enter the polyclinic at 2.30pm, there's probably only two patients left in the polyclinic.

Even if you get the chance to enter polyclinic from 9am-12pm, you have to run after signatures from the specialists. What am i talking about? Well, you have to see a patient, ask if the resident allows u to take the case to present to the specialist, then run around finding the specialist, get the specialist to see that patient, then copy the patient's medical record(handwritten, not photocopy!), and hand it up to the specialist and have a discussion about that patient's disease. Sometimes, presenting a patient like this takes up two hours. And you are supposed to present around 4 patients a day. How about thinking of it mathematically? There's 6 koas, and one specialist. The specialist wont be there the whole day, maybe from 9-11am. So within that two hours, all six of you fight to get patients and to get the specialist. one specialist, two hours, six koas, 24 patients - do u get the picture?

we also have this thing called 'jaga' or on call. It sounds cool right? But do you know what we actually do? Nurse work. Yeah. We balance urine output and how much the patient drinks or is infused. We also send blood or urine or pus samples to the lab. And collect X rays and CT scans from the radiology lab. And monitor the patient's vital signs every 3-6 hours. Do we learn anything? No. We don't really get to draw blood or do any medical procedures. I am gonna graduate in a few months time, and i've never done water seal drainage or insert a central line or cricothyroidotomy. Not even circumcision!

this is just a brief description of the ineffective education system in my university. so at the end of the day, when i get home after 4pm, i feel so drained cos i've spent all my energy running after signatures. i dun get the chance to run after knowledge cos the rules are to get all the signatures if i want to sit for exams. if i run after knowledge and not signatures, i wont be able to sit for exams for every department and i'll never graduate. i admit it, i'm stupid. way more stupid and incompetent than medical graduates from ANYWHERE else. i don't want anybody to be like me, so i will not recommend ANYBODY to study here. ask anyone in my batch. is there anyone among 60 of us who has no regrets about studying here? Maybe a handful. But the rest of us, we do.