Doc Ahmad Hajiri

Clerkship Day 253/253 Today is the last day of Clerkship (known to UPCM as Learning Unit 6 or LU6), my fourth year as a Medical students. No, maybe it is not yet the official end of the Academic year as we still have our 5 Final examinations and 2 Comprehensive exams next week... But yes, this is the end of our final rotations in the different departments in UP-PGH. I can't even believe I am all done with all of them! We started with Pediatrics, then Family and Community Medicine, then Obstetrics and Gynecology then we had a one-month elective, then we went on to Surgery then Emergency Medicine and Anesthesiology, then the dreaded Neurosciences, then longest rotation which is Internal Medicine and last came the not-so-fun-anymore "fun four": Rehab Med, Orthopedics, Otorhinolayngology (ORL/ENT) and Ophthalmology. Wow! It felt like it started years ago! But it still feels like it just happened yesterday! Maa sha Allah! And as I struggled to "relearn" the ...

Joining Muslim Doctors (MD) for a Tuli Mission Alhamdulillah, a few days ago, a good friend of mine told me that the young medical students from Ateneo de Zamboanga University School of Medicine (ADZU-SOM) were here in Manila for a surgical mission. Their group was known as the Muslim Doctors (or M.D.). I went to visit them that day and to my delight, they invited us to join their event last May 1, 2016 at Mahabba Islamic Center in San Andres Bukid, Malate, Manila. I immediately informed the members of UP-Association of Muslim Students (UP-AMS) and Alhamdulillah, 5 of them volunteered to join me. I learned later on that another friend and fellow medical student from another school will also join. First meeting with the MD team I was on ER Duty the night before, and honestly I did not get much sleep before the event. But Alhamdulillah, I was not feeling that sleepy maybe because of the excitement! I met with my members right after my duty and went to the venue where w...

Is it crazy if I keep pon sending the same letter to myself after 10 months? Or another year? Hey wake up Ahmad! Hope you didn't fail to read this letter again and again! May 30, 2016 (or anytime in the future after July 30, 2015) Assalamu Alaykum wa rahmatullah! Hey dude, it’s me, your pre-clinical clerkship self a.k.a. the self that you had (hopefully will still have) before you started your death-defying ordeal called “Clerkship”. I know this is crazy, but hey, since when did we ever consider things “not crazy” huh? Perhaps, right now you’re about to begin your most challenging year in Med School. And the anxiety is killing you already—you don’t know what to expect, you feel like you know nothing at all! Don’t worry, that is exactly what you are supposed to feel. Just give it a a few days and you will get used to the feeling, the pressure and slowly you will find yourself adapting to the new environment you have. Or maybe you are already in the middl...