Bismillah...
Oh my God! How time flies! It's almost time to go back already and yes, I already have my one-way ticket back to Malaysia. Looking at how seldom I posted on this blog during my postgrad program reflects just how occupied I really am. Although my socmed doesn't seem to suggest so hahaha. So lets talk about my learning experience here...
The course...
My course is an intense one, I would say. In term 1 and 2, I had classes on Monday to Wednesday, from 1000 to 1700. And on Thursday to Friday was the hospital placement from 0900 to 1700. The good side of being in a course with a full schedule like this is that the nature of assessments are somewhat tolerable. Some of my friends who had lesser classes had more assignments and their final assessment was one essay that carries 80-100% of the course's total mark! This one essay is either a final submission at the end of term or to be submitted within 24 hours (Which I think is insane!). For my course, the marks are distributed between essays, exams, presentations and interviews. So, if you don't do well in one, you can try to do better in the others to make up the marks.
One thing that surprised not only me but also my other Malaysian friends who are not familiar with UK grading system is how difficult it is to pass the 70% mark! When I saw 70-79% as distinction in the course's grade descriptor when I started this course, I thought "That's not too difficult to achieve..". I was wrong! Apparently, 80% is rare, and to achieve >70%, your work has to be near perfect! LOL I literally just got a feedback on one of my report in which I made some careless mistakes that had cost me some marks. From my rough calculation, I might get an overall total of 69.5. How close is that!? hahaha
The placement...
My favourite part is of course the hospital attachment (Yes, partly because of my very charming supervisor *bat eyelashes*). I love how our rotation was set up where we were placed in different specialties for 4-6 weeks rather than going to different units every week. This enabled us to learn in depth as we only spend 2 days per week at the hospital; so we had at least 8 days per specialty. My rotation was at Nueurology, Liver, Renal, Cardio and HIV. There were some disruptions while I was in Liver and Cardio, though. When I was in Liver, UK was severely hit by Omicron so we were not allowed to enter wards and see patients for 2-3 weeks. In Cardio, the team was constantly short of staff that we didn't get to learn much. We were then sent to Pediatric instead which I personally love although it was overwhelming to watch the preterm babies fighting for survival inside their incubator.
The HIV rotation was initially not in the schedule but then we had 5 extra weeks in term 3 before we start with our project. So, we requested for the specialties that we are interested in. Lucky me, W managed to arrange HIV for us! I was the happiest during that 5 weeks. I felt like I was 'home'! They have more treatments here that I had to have the list of the brand names with me all the time because I can't remember all of them. I really love how the team engage with patients in the community. They have all sorts of supports here like providing homes, protection for victims of abuse and they even have a team that follow up patients at home. Although I'm not at all ecstatic to return to work (although I'm dying to get my salary back), I do miss managing HIV very much! I was just casually talking to the team lead and she said what made her stay for decades in the specialty was because of the patients. That totally resonates with me...
Oh ya we had a physical examination class with W for an hour. I enjoyed the cardiovascular examination using the Student Auscultation Manikin or SAM. I think that's a very effective teaching method because you perform the examination on SAM and you could choose what kind of heart sound you want to hear.
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| Si baju biru yang boleh dipuja tapi tak dapat dimiliki...😌 |
The conference...
I had the opportunity to join the 2 day Clinical Pharmacy Conference in ExCel London. Their pharmacy conference, I say, is at a different level than what we have back home. I can't help but compare! There were so many booths and the program consist of various fields in Pharmacy. Pharmacists have more options here and their skills have expanded to not only as drug experts, but they also polished other transferable skills which make them a more universal workforce that could switch from one field to another. I went back feeling like I learned a lot!
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| Day 1 |
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| Day 2 |
Has staying in the UK made me want to move and work here? Hurm I always know that I'm not the type who could live away from my family this far. I refused to go to Russia for my undergrad study because I can't imagine not being there to watch my niece and nephew grow and I don't want to not being able to be with my family if anything happens. And I think I did mentioned before that it took me a long time to decide to do my MSc abroad because I 'm just too attached to my family. Whenever I'm asked this question, my answer has always been the same, "The only reason that will make me migrate and work in another country is if I have to follow my husband..." Hahaha
And I do feel I appreciate my religion and culture even more since I left home....
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