Doc Ahmad Hajiri

 Assalamu Alaykum! (Peace be upon you!) Alhamdulillah, my first week as a clinical clerk is almost over (as of this writing hehe). And I am done with one-fourth of my first rotation: Pediatrics Emergency Room (Pedia ER).   As I may have mentioned in my revious post, Clerks are supposed to rotate for one month under Pediatrics which is subdivided further into 3 departments/services: Wards 9 or 11, Pedia ER and NICU (Neonatal ICU). My group was assigned under PER for our first week. I honestly enjoyed rotating in PER for several reasons. First are the Pedia residents. They are all cool and fun to be with, they always have time to laugh around and be happy with simple things even with all those toxicities they have; they are always ready help and teach us students with essential knowledge and concepts in pedia especially on resuscitation. We even had a session of QnA while resuscitating a patient! Awesome! They are always approachable ad can understand us clerks who...

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!) The second week as an ICC student in the Department of Pediatrics just ended with a rather "incomplete" sets of days in a week. We had special non-working, no-classes holidays the past 2 weeks that reduced our class days from 10 to 7 (due to the Feast of Black Nazarene last January 9 and now the Papal Visit from Jan 15-19). And as a result, all those supposedly scheduled lectures and case conferences were cramped in the remaining school days!  It was actually exhausting: to report on a case conference at 7:30 then have an ER duty the next night and then go back to class the next morning!!! What now, are we finally and slowly turning into zombies? But then again, we chose this path from the very beginning, and there are no reason to complain about these right now... Why dream of being a doctor if you want to feel nothing but ease and comfort? Things don't do that way. Always. And exhausting as it may seem, we are still hav...

Assalamu Alaykum! (Peace be upon you all!) No, this is not about my first born son. We are still way too early for that! haha. This is about the first baby boy I delivered (or helped or assisted in delivery) during our 24-hour duty at the Labor Room-Delivery Room (LRDR) in PGH.  Well, the experience was indeed something to really cherish. Simply witnessing a baby being born right in front of your eyes, and hearing his first loud cry is simply ... see? I can't even find the right word for it! Just SubhanaAllah! (Praise be to Allah!) Life indeed is an amazing gift only He can give. The story was: We started our duty at exactly 7AM last November 29, 2014. At first we were all clueless as what to do. We were the first group in our block to be on 24H duty. so we practically don't have any idea, until later on, we started learning things, starting doing things that are requested of us to do (I will publish a separate post about LRDR duties in sha Allah). Everything wa...

Assalamu Alaykum (Peace be upon you all!) Our one-month rotation with the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology for our ICC Training (OBGYN 250) finally ended today. It was indeed a wonderful experience, that 30-day madness trying to remember all those numbers (of what AOGs this test is requested and this condition wrecks havoc), the dragging days in the posts, and of course, the paper case protocols that never ended. Until today though.  We had our "oral exam" earlier--which in the end turned out to be an essay-type written exam (hey! when was the last time I took an essay exam?)--then followed by the 100-item, 17-page comprehensive exam. Too long? Naah, it was actually a pretty fair exam if you really did your part, which ehem I think I failed in doing mine... anyway, enough of that. After the 7-hour exam, we were all like: We Survived! My dear Nakama!!! (Originally from One Piece, all rights reserved to them :P) So, the first semester of the newly s...

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 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: All LUs/Year levels but not in all schools] Assalamu Alaykum! (Greetings of Peace!) Transcriptions or “transes” are the concise and summarized copies of the lectures by your professors. There should be some people who will do the dirty job of transcribing, and they are called the transcribers or in short: “Transers” Your class will usually divide you into groups of transers with three members each (some schools will have only two) and you will be assigned to a scheduled lecture for you to transcribe. It is then your responsibility as the transers to get the necessary and significant information discussed in the lectures. You also have to do your best to persuade your lecturer to give you a copy of their presentations and handouts. Some professors are generous while others are just plain, nasty ones. So you have to be prepared if you have to start from scratch for the trans. But this (starting from scratch) does not happen very often as you will also be ...