An Enriching Hospital Attachment

About two hours ago, we 'graduated' from our 8-day attachment at Serdang Hospital which spanned for 3 weeks. I hadn't had any expectation on this attachment, as past experiences had made me felt discouraged about the pharmacy career. However, this attachment turned out to be pleasant & enriching- neither loaded with so much work nor it became a daily chore for me.

My temporary student pass in the hospital. They spelt my surname wrongly!

Trivias:
1) 4 pharmacists there are from the SAME BATCH of mpharm in our uni! Imagine us working in the same department in the same hospital.. *it can be good or bad hehe*

2) there are 2 pharmacists who are TWINS! What are the odds- both studied pharmacy in UM & both ended up as clinical pharmacists in Serdang Hospital!

3) The hospital implements sort-of-paperless clinician access system. The patient's drug chart, laboratory data, tests results, clinical note by dr. are all input into the computer system & are accessible by all the healthcare members.


The plus side is, we do not need to decipher the dr.'s handwriting, which is more often than not, hardly legible (perhaps due to being in a rush or wanting to protect themselves) The downside is, the drug chart doesn't tally at times; for e.g. the clinical note reads 'continue IV Azithromycin' but it doesn't appear in the drug chart.

I mentioned 'sort-of-paperless' because in the nephrology ward, there are still bed head tickets- I still prefer looking at the input-output balance as well as the drugs there. The drug chart is signed by nurses who have given the medicines to the patient.


4) The white coat is very powerful indeed! Nobody questioned me at all as I stepped into the Intensive Care Unit, whereby visitor had to take off their shoes and wear the shoe cover. In tracing one patient's bed-head ticket, I went to the 6th floor only to find that patient was discharged from ICU (at 4th floor). Later I was directed to the Jabatan Rekod at 2nd floor as the bed-head ticket had been sent there since patient had been discharged earlier.


The ICU is really clean-I would give it a 5-star rating. I bet Dr. p8 will say it adheres to 'Good Clinical Practice' !!



What I would miss in Serdang Hospital:

The beautiful gardens!!!!!!!!!!!

-The impressive outlook of the hospital.
-The satisfaction one gets upon succeeded in looking for clinical practice guidelines that help in our case clerking.
-The warm smile of Ms. Cee.
-Discussing pharmaceutical care issues with Ms. F.
-Chatting with a friendly PRP who just graduated from nottingham.
-The bonding sessions with friends, a few whom I got to talk to more bcoz of the attachment.


What I would NOT miss in Serdang Hospital:
-THE CAFETERIA'S FOOD!! *think red, dried up dishes- the typical government hospital's food that you get*



Of course, an 8-day hospital attachment is not likely to find me the passion, however, I am a bit more encouraged. This attachment has given us an insight into what we are expected to do as a PRP and later on FRP, more importantly, it has enabled us to know for ourselves which areas we need to improve on.


Sometimes, you really wonder why your uni tries to gear you up to be 'pharmaceutical technologist who is aware of current trend in therapeutics & learning genomics to design novel drugs' when the basics-choice of drugs, dosage regimen, frequency, dose etc. are NOT being emphasized.


With such a big hole that our uni has created, I vow to equip myself with more practical knowledge during sem 7 in preparation for my sem 8 clerkship.