Hello everyone!
I am about to share with you an experience that I gained
during my three month posting at Oral Surgery. What sounded like the most
"killer" of all labs turned out to be a journey of self-awareness and
a whole lotta knowledge
So far during my clinical years, it was an integrated system
where we decide to do what we want with our working hours and patient
availability. It’s a whole different system here whereby we are focused on one
scope that is surgery. In this lab, we diagnose surgical cases such as
abscesses, cysts, and the usual tooth extraction.
in this lab its more than just come to work and get
requirements done. they have a whole hierarchy. In short, you begin at the
bottom of the food chain from a yellow badge, to a green badge to well… give it
a few years (if you wish to continue)… a surgical resident followed by a
lecturer. That being said… lets begin!
YELLOW = YOU NOOB = YOU SLAVE!!!!
hahaha… okkey, that may sound over dramatic. But underneath
it all that is what the yellows are like being at the bottom of the food chain.
We handle control cases of operations done by the residents on the previous
day. This means the initial searching the entire lab for the previous case file
from that operation, among all the green badges request of their own case
files. This means we must understand by heart the mechanism of healing.... what
conditions are considered normal in wound healing, antibiotic effectiveness,
medication allergy responses and what to do next (planning). We get to
experience what it was like to removes sutures. oh this might sound crappy but
trust me if this is your first time holding a pair of scissors to a patients
mouth your hands are gonna tremble. unless you have the hands for it, in which
case I don’t… hehehe
we also get to start diagnosing easy and difficult cases,
and this means a sound knowledge of each case itself.. and yeas, Dr. Roberto
was right, “there are never 2 identical cases”. This is a golden moment to
sharpen our knowledge as we can discuss each case personally with the chosen
lecturer. in short, YOU NO STUDY, YOU GET ASSIGNMENT, YOU NO GET MARKS!
Weeks into the lab, we are slowly introduced to assisting of
residents operations… and yeas, we start at the bottom, being the “runner” so
to speak, the usual duties are to assist holding the dental unit lights to make
sure the resident gets a fully lit operating field. we be slaves remember?
hahahaha
GREEN = YOU RULE = LIKE A BOSS
in the sixth week, we are upgraded to a green badge… this is
where the fun happens… because you get to do extractions and shyte… hahaha… We
get more complex cases like handling fractures and the epic case of third molar
extractions!!!! lemme see, in Malay its
called the gigi geraham paling belakang kan?
by this time, a new group of yellows have entered an took
our previous place and we get to noob them around. At the same time we carry
the responsibility of molding them to be the next green… in short, if we suck
at teaching, IT WILL GODDAMN SHOW…. hahaha…
So yeah… 18 extractions to be completed. GO!
NOW THE EPIC PART
the normal amount of people for a specific badge is 20… but
since my group was the last group of my batch, we only had 9 people! So when
time came for the switching of badges, we had to wait for the juniors to enter…
so there was this one epic week where we were both YELLOWS AND GREENS! the lab
was under our management… and what’s even more epic is that we handled the
whole department pretty well…. eat that bitches who think we couldn’t do it!
hahaha
so yeah… oral surgery was fun… it was hell I know… but it
was fun… the lecturers reminded us endlessly about our responsibilities as a
dentist, as a human and to our God. I am thankful for each and every moment
that made me someone even better than the previous three months…
WITH THE KILLER LECTURER Drg. ENDRAJANA. LIKE A BOSS!!! |
FYI: all my requirements were fulfilled in the nick of time.
Alhamdulillah.