Doc Ahmad Hajiri

Assalamu Alaykum! (Peace be upon you all!)   [NOTE: This is a really, really old post! For those applying to UPCM for school years 2021 and beyond, it is best to visit the UPCM website for updates. Download and read the latest primer here . The details in this blogspot may not be applicable anymore. Read with discretion.    You can send me a message on my FB Page here :    Thanks!]  This post was originally published in January 2015, almost two years after I entered the great hallways of Calderon in UPCM. Now, it's January 2018: roughly 6 months since graduation, and here I am, a full-pledged UPCM Alumnus and now a licensed physician! Wow! Then I realized in this blog that this post reaches more hits that the other posts I have published , and I know I badly needed to update this...And so I did. I tried... And so... To those aspiring future martyrs amazing medical students who will sacrifice their social lives really enjoy learning the wonder...

Clerkship Day 137: Anesthesiology Assalamu Alaykum (Peace be upon you all!). It’s been 5 days since our classes resumed. Actually, I prefer calling it “training” than “classes” because we don’t have much “class sessions” compared to when we were on our first three years in medschool. We are spending more time in the hospital, shadowing our doctors, trying to learn as much as we can from them. So yeah, it should be “training”. We are now training under the department of Anesthesiology and this will last for two weeks only. They told us that we are fortunate because there are only TWO medical schools in the whole country has clerkship trainings for Anesth. Cool! So it’s really best to make the most of our two weeks stay while we can.  We’ve been to Surgery last time, so we are not that “alien” to the world of the Operating Rooms. Only this time, we are not working on the OR table anymore, but at the Anesth “territory”: that small, ever-present area where the anesthesiolog...

Assalamu Alaykum! (Peace be with you) It’s 11:50PM in my clock and I am about to hit the bunkers but decided to write a short post about the recent events. (PS I need to keep it short coz I have another 24-Hour duty tomorrow ^_^) I am now rotating in OBSTETRICS and GYNECOLOGY (OBGYN) for two weeks already and we have another two weeks remaining until the next rotation. And believe it or not—as much as I hate the bloody business in OBGYN—I am actually enjoying the clerkship in OB :) I do not know there’s just too many things to do that are not that dragging. I mean, I can now actually feel and call myself a part of the medical team working for the benefit and well being of our patients! Anyway, here's a quick run-down of the usual days in OBGYN: The OB Services.   Students rotating in OBGYNE will be divided into 3 services: A, B and C and they will rotate on duty schedules. There will be at least 5 clerks on each service with one service having 6. Interns have...

Assalamu Alaykum! (Peace be upon you!) We are already halfway through FCH 251: Integrated Clerkship II in Family and Community Medicine. Our Sub-group, Block 7A recently ended our 2-week rotation at Community Medicine. Alhamdulillah, another wonderful experience to share ^_^ We started our first week doing the 3-day orientations (yes, I'm serious!): Orientations at Manila Health Department, Fabella Health Center, then Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM) in UP-PGH, and so on. The rest of the week were spent on two things: Doing consultations and Public health lectures at Fabella Health Center (FCH) and attending SGDs and lectures. We also have our two-time 10-hr duty at the Ambulatory Dept (AMBU) during the weekends.  The first of three orientations! haha With our awesome LO Axis at the meeting/waiting area: the undying medstones! The Consultations Area. That awesome painting at the back gives much more life (?) to this place. Al t hough the o...

 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...

Alhamdulillah! (All praise be to Allah!) After the loooong wait, the list of admitted applicants who passed the rigorous application process in UPCM is now up! We now have the initial list of LU3 students (1st year Medicine Proper) for the school year 2015-2016.  MashaAllah! I can still remember that day when I received the same news, it was still unbelievable for me! Allahu akbar! (Allah is great!) And now I can't believe I am already about to end my third year in UP College of Medicine as an ICC and a proud member of the awesome Class 2017!  It was a life-changing news for me. And I am sure this will surely be another life-changing news for the 160 applicants as well ^_^  To check the list of successful admitted applicants, just click this link   Snapshot of the official announcement of the UP College of Medicine website This year, Alhamdulillah we have 3 Muslims (that I know of) ^_^ I already met two of them. And I am not sure if there are sti...

Assalamu Alaykum! (Peace be upon you all!) We are back in the colourful world of Pediatrics after a week of break with the second half of Pharmacology module. After the nerve-racking exam last Friday, it was indeed a welcoming relief to see the colourful walls in the OPD Pediatrics with all those Disney characters all around. And of course, the cheerful smiles of our angelic patients never fail to keep our days brighter as well. The colorful walls in the OPD-Pediatrics There are more better photos of Disney Princess somewhere. Case Conferences and Higher learning! This week we had two case conferences, a lecture on complementary feeding (where our professor gave us chocolates! Yeay!) and lots and lots of Out-Patient exposure! Our rotation of 12-hour duties in the Pediatric Emergency Department (Pedia ER) are also being wrapped up for this last two weeks of our training in this department. This Friday my group will have our second and last 12-hour duty :) Pretty ...

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!) 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...