Comm Skills, I Have None

Dear Blog,

Here I am, in UKM trying to re-adjust my life back to the way things were before my long, long, long holiday began...then suddenly, *poof* a tonne of bricks just falls on me. Now, I don't mean that literally however, after recalling back on today's incident I might as well have been squashed by an aeroplane for all I care.

.Farah? What bothers you so?.

I'll tell you what, you freaky-voice-in-my-head you, this whole curricular system that we have in UKM can really bring you down sometimes. I mean, there's this thing that we call Standardized Patients (SP) where our medic faculty pay a few people to act as patients and later give their feedbacks on how each students' performances were like. Well, we had that today for our PPD strand and boy, was it a blast! (note the sarcasm).

The scenario was, us Persatuan Mahasiswa/i Fakulti Perubatan, PERSIAP people were holding a health campaign on "LOVE and PROTECT your HEART" and there were clinical booths, posters and an examination room for Medical Officers (MO) or lecturers to do med checkup for em people that participate this campaign. Each student was required to act as the officer in charge of the information table and probe our SP on what it is that he/she wants to know about the the risk factors of living an unhealthy or inactive lifestyle.

Now, that seems simple enough, right? WRONG! The SP was supposed to rate us on our performance based on a 1-3 scale. Most of my PBL-mates got 2/3 and one guy even got 3/3. So how did I do? 1/3!!! Like, wha' the fudge? He, the SP said that my confidence wasn't shining and that whatever explanation and information I gave was "kurang jelas". Like, how mad was I? But, after awhile I cooled down and reflected on my performance and figured I sorta did badly. Now, it wasn't much about the info I gave but more towards how I channeled my knowledge into Layman's term.

My other problem was the language barrier. The SP - being an orang kampung and all, preferred us to speak Malay. English is my first language, always have and always will be. So when the time comes for me to speak Malay, it takes me a moment to think the appropriate words in English, and translate and formulate it to the correct Malay sentence in my head and actually speaking it out aloud with the correct pronounciation and stuff. So, in the midst of that speech mechanism of mine, I tend to go "uhhhh" and "ummm" and possibly stutter until I get the right Layman Malay terminology.

Despite all this, I have learnt my weakness as a doctor-to-be and that is to communicate well with really, really Malay patients. And to be aware of this weakness before I hit clinical years is really a blessing in disguise. And with that, maybe this system in UKM ain't that bad. I just need to catch up on things, follow the flow, and maybe reach their high-standards of doctor becomings. I am thankful and grateful for being at UKM...sometimes. HAHA. Alritey, gots ta go...ciao bella~

l e n a out~