Doc Ahmad Hajiri

Assalamu Alaykum! (Peace be with you!) It's my last week as a Senior Intern in Internal Medicine and this week, we had the chance (and honor) to accompany our Service Senior Resident, Dr. David Francisco on his ECG rounds. We went to the Central ECG Room where all the ECG requests and results are done, took the remaining unread ECG's and read them. Awesome, right!  Dr. Fransisco teaching us how to read and interpret ECGs while us Senior interns are fooling around :p I always had a hard time understanding ECG's before. Of course, before medschool, those lines were nothing but alien scriptures to me like everyone else! haha. But after studying Basic Clinical Cardiology (one of my "first loves") in LU4 and getting exposed to the wonders of electrophysiology of the heart, understanding the peaks and troughs, the elevations and the depressions of those lines, was simply amazing! I still can't believe a few weird lines could already tell a clinician w...

“Good morning, Doc!” someone greeted me with a flash of smile as I entered the Rural Health Unit. She was one of the health workers assigned in the registration area and thus will always be the first one to see, or greet anyone who comes in. “Good morning da isab, maam,” I replied with an equally warm smile that she gave me, “ Misan ‘ Sir’ na hadja ba maam , bukun pa isab aku duktur.” I explained that she can just call me ‘sir’, I am not a doctor yet after all. And I am not really used to being called a “Doc” (yet) by so many people, especially those senior than me in the health service. “ Ayaw doc, di’ manjari! Mabiyaksa ra san kaw.” She remarked with a simple yet decisive tone. And that’s how the discussion ended: “Nope. It just can’t happen. You have to get used to it anyway.” And since then, almost everyone in the health center would address me as “Doc”. The younger “Doc”. Whenever I meet my patients, I would always introduce myself as a medical student, a “not-y...

THoughts of the Week (TOTW) # 11 What happened this week: Started with FCH250: Community Medicine in Urban Setting, Being an LO, 24th birthday and being sick, Herbal medicine.  In five hundred words, I would aim to share all the thoughts I had in this week. Be it in complete paragraphs or just mere thoughts that come into mind. Here are the things that wrapped up week #11 for 2015. The Essence of Community Medicine “Health is not just the mere absence of illness but a complete state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being.” –Alma Ata declaration of Primary Health Care (1978) “Public health is everyone’s business”, “health is an inalienable human right”, “The ultimate goal of community medicine is to ensure equitable health for all” are just among the concepts being bombarded to us since our freshie days. And here we are again, refreshing those ideals, engraving them once again in our hearts. Community medicine has always been close to my heart....

Assalamu Alaykum! (Peace be upon you all!) Heya! Here we go again with the usual "I am sorry it took me so long to post here again" scenario which I believe I should already get rid of (-_-) Starting today! I never even have a "Date published" tags on my posts...so no one would really know how late I am. haha! But kidding aside, I think the dates really doesn't matter anymore... If I am writing these experiences and maybe some tips for the next ICCs*, the order of each rotation would not matter: for every block (all 8 of them) have different schedules, and perhaps different experiences as well. So I will just write what I have in my journals, keep them short and concise as possible (which I am really poor at by the way), and hopefully pray that someone would stumble on this blog and read it. haha.  Anyway, continuing our sharing of stories and learning experiences (?) as an ICC student... I see my calendar here that we are now in our 8th week as an ICC ...

Assalamu Alaykum! (Peace be upon you all) This is rather late, but I will post it anyway :) For the sake of documenting things here haha. Sorry I wasn't able to post much these days (imagine the gap from Day 1 to 10! haha). I just don't feel like there are still readers visiting my blog anymore :( Sad. anyways, here goes! Week 2: Anesthesiology Department Day 8, Monday: It's all about Pain Our second rotation as ICCs is in the Anesth Department for one week and the module title was "Intro to Pain" (huh! talk about subliminal messages, this must be some painful week).  The orientation on day 1 was quite chaotic, to say it frankly. But here are the things I got: During our one-week stay in the department, there will be a single lecture about "Pain"; we will be divided into two groups with five members each and will be assigned to different "posts": Acute Pain Services (APS), Pain Clinic at the OPD, the OPD-OR, and at the Post...

Assalamu Alaykum! (Peace be upon you all!) This is a fast post on my daily adventure in the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) as an ICC (3rd year) student. I may not may not edit this depends on the free time I might have. Contrary to what most medical students say, ICC days are not always benign and free; there are pseudo-benign and some toxic days as well. This journal begins today (I did not include the two weeks in Management course as they did not involve patient care and exposure :) This journal aims to document the daily experience and learning I had and will have as part of one of the most awesome group/block in our class, Block 6A! (Bllooooock Sixey!) DAY 1: Today marks the first day of our legit training as ICC Students. The last two weeks in management was quite benign alright, and this is the first time for our group to finally get real in patient contact and out-patient exposures. Yes, we had our fair share of lenient days the past two weeks and those actual...

[Helpful for: LU3 and LU4 (1st and 2nd Year)] Assalamu Alaykum! (Greetings of Peace!) We will jump from the topic on “lectures” to one of the dreaded yet fun type of exams: the Kodachrome exams! This was supposed to be in the later part but knowing the schedule of the exams is already near, I have to push this post up the schedule in hopes of it to be of use somehow. Disclaimer! I am not the best guy to give you these tips, but because no one is doing it, then what’s the trouble of doing it instead? Haha! So what is a Kodachrome exam? This one goes back in time immemorial when medstudents are still using the real kodachrome machine where pictures of specimens (usually tissues) will be projected on a white screen. (In LU4, you will experience using a real kodachrome machine thru Dr. Dimacali’s lectures in pathology :D). Nowadays we are using the overhead LCD projectors with the ever-so-convenient MS Powerpoint presentations where digital copies of the specimens wi...

]Helpful for: All LUs/Year levels] Assalamu Alaykum! (Greetings of Peace!) Being a medstudent means attending to seemingly endless classes: from boring lectures to eye-popping histo-labs and neck-breaking cadaver dissections. What is the purpose of the word “student” anyway if you don’t attend those classes that will—ehem—prepare you in your future professional career? And so, as much as we lazy students want to skip all those classes, we cannot deny the fact that we really need them—badly need them. But hey! Not all classes will be full of boring 100+ presentation slides; there will also be some cool professors with cool ideas to make their lectures livelier. Ever attended a class where you played games all throughout? How about a whole 3 hours of lecture while standing? Or just sitting back and watch a good movie? (Although I hate the “reflection papers” after those films). And how about professors that suddenly throw firecrackers inside the room to wake you up? Haha...