Last Day! Hurray!

It would come to an end. In fact, I wrote this during lunch, and we would have another couple of sessions before the workshop done. All in all, it has been a success. This was the third time that I was tutoring a similar workshop, and I must say, this has been the best lot. We would be discussing how we could integrate what we learned in the last couple of days in our daily practice, and looking forward to hear what the participants had to say.

Next Three Days

I would be spanning the coming three days attending a workshop at the Julius Center here in UM. It was mainly on Evidence-Based Medicine, a subject I have been keen on. I have been a tutor for such program for the coming three years, although for this particular one, even the chief organiser admitted that the program was announced rather late. The invitation email to my Head of Department only appeared towards the end of last week, even though I learned about the program well in advance.

The program today was mainly on the introduction to clinical appraisal. We would later be put into small groups - mainly he attendance were pharmacists - for group work. Would see how things develop.

An Inspirational Talk

I had the privilege of being in audience for the inauguration lecture of one of the my most respected Professor at UM, Prof Adeeba Kamarulzaman. She is the Infectious Disease Physician at UMMC and currently the Chairman of the Malaysian AIDS Council. Her lecture was mainly on the problem of HIV infection and IV drug user, and how the "tough love" approach by the authority may not be the best way forward. After all, addiction should be seen as a disease which should be approached medically in a systematic manner.

Though I missed the first ten minutes if the talk, I managed to sneaked through the back door and for 45 minutes, she presented arguments on how the problem above should be approached in the future. Even though those nay be ideal, she appreciated the hurdles faced in our community both culturally and politically.

At the end, when the lights were undimmed, I then realised who was in the audience. There was Marina Mahathir, a few of her collaborators home and abroad, a few dignitaries including ambassadors from Europe - Netherlands included which she made the point of the impact on addiction as the ban against marijuana was lifted. Not least was her uncle, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah. The University's top brace pale in comparison to these distinguished guests to be honest.

Some sort of normalcy

Things have quietened down a fair bit since the event of the weekend. Anita's back pain has much improved but she will still need plenty of rest, something she was not accustomed of doing. Idlan was bow completing his third day of assessment and Irfan was practicing for the coming school Sports Day, as a dancer for his house ....

As you can tell, things were settling down back to some sort of normalcy. As for me, I was feeling awfully tired and has since devices a plan for the rest of today. I shall sneak home just before five to make sure I won't get stuck in traffic. I will then have an early dinner and head to bed early.

I shall then wake up super early to catch the Champion's League match in the early hours. My beloved United will be playing mind you .....

It was raining outside

It looked like it would be raining outside. I just had lunch and was about to leave for Friday Prayers. But with the rain, I may have to give it a rest.

Today would mark the third week that I would be in Kelang teaching my Medical Students. I have another week to go, but it would be the exam week then. So, the students were understandably anxious - Malaysian education system is exam-driven, right from kindergarten to Medical School. We finished our clinical session just now and after another tutorial this afternoon, that would be it for the week. They had another pair of lecturers before me for four weeks, so all together they would have a total 7 weeks of teaching. For the exam next week, I prepared an essay question, as well as organising the clinical examination short cases for each one of them. All 44 of them.

When I first started coming to Kelang back in 2004, there were only 32 students in my class. All of them have graduated, and some of them still kept in touch. It was easy as I enjoy teaching, but 44 students to one lecturer was just way too much. There were too many compromises being made, and in the three weeks I had so far with them, I was sure not all of the students were happy. They had to understand however that I can;t please everyone, not it was my job to please them.

I kept on stressing to the department and the students that my role here in Kelang would be to facilitate teaching. Facilitating does not mean spoon-feeding them with information. As Medicine was such a wide and varied subject, I was not capable, or should be expected to be able to know everything. The pace of the development in Medicine was also very rapid. I read journals just to keep up and it was not easy to stay at the cutting edge of things. But at least the UM Medical Students should be grateful. They have dedicated lecturers who came and taught, them, not only from my department, but from Surgical, Gynaecology and Paediatrics as well. I can name a few other medical schools who struggle to keep up. They may have far too many medical students to cope with and were not able to supervise all of them. Here, at UM, even though we had to struggle at times, we tried our best to keep up and were successful most of the time. But I was not sure how long we can keep up with the 44 to 1 ratio. It was starting to break my back ….. I was worried that we give too much emphasis on quantity rather than quality.

The students complained that they did not have enough teaching. The lecturers complained that it was too much work to do going about teaching these large group. The Management were under pressure to produce more doctors by the powers that be. And I understood that Malaysia needed more doctors in general. The solution here may be very obvious. We need more lecturers. We need more people on the ground. We need to recruit more people. We need to bring the 44:1 ratio down. But there were not too many people to take up the task of being medical lecturers as it took time and commitment to do it well. There were many more easier path to take on to progress in medical career compared to being a lecturer. It was a vicious cycle. But we have to start somewhere and we have to make the job of being a lecturer more attractive.We have to start paying the medical lecturers better salary. Certainly there were move in that direction, but would be enough to make the carrer choice more attractive would it be able to make the career choice more attractive , than say, a chronic MO in Kementerian Kesihatan. I bet some of them were paid more than me doing half the amount of work.

It was raining heavily outside. It looked like that I will be missing my Friday prayers.