NA College graduation

Today is the Photo taking day for the graduates of the New Asia College. The weather is not exactly very good but we had a great time. So I would just share some photo here. Promptly after these photos were taken, I was assaulted by Champaigns by my classmates....


A moment before cutting the poor suckling pig 


The Suckling pig is now really very dead.... 


This is Mr Suckling pig before he meets his final death 
This is peter and I with Amy from the medical canteen... 
This is (from the left) Ruby, Ken, Peter, Chiu Yi and I. 
Shannon and Me....blurry 
From the Left, Me, Larry, Chiu Yi and Peter ( my flower is dropping so I was holding on to it.) 

From the Left, Loretta, Me and Peter Yip ( we have 2 Peters in the Class) 

Day 2 in NDH

Well today is the 2nd day we spent in NDH....we skipped school all this while.... Anyway.. didnt do much... attended one tutorial on colorectal surgery and then presented 3 cases during the afternoon grandround.....boring

1st Day in North District Hospital

Today is the start of my North District Hospital Surgical Rotation. NDH is, as the name implies, in the northern part of Hong Kong. I will be spending 4 weeks here learning general Surgery.

One thing about NDH is that they have very good food in the staff canteen.


Here you can see some hot and juice chicken drum sticks.....with honey sauce dripping from them.



Here you can the canteen staff Barbequeing the Steaks...with the smells of haven...superb



Here is what I got at the end. A baked rice with mixed vegetable and cheese, a sesame cheese cake, a lemonade, a cream of mushroom.




Just for contrast, this the kind of food an elderly patient had in the hospital...quite bad...

Medical Grand Round

Today's Medical Grand Round was supposed on some new development in haematology...but Prof Joseph Sung decided to take over the Grand Round and shared with us what he learnt from visiting the now Tsunami-crippled Phuket Island. There is a lot of photos and a lot first hand experience. He also took the chance the discuss about the implications of natural disasters on healthcare workers. Quite interesting.

When was the last time you do things for the first time?

What we did today,

Strode around the street in white coats and scrubs.....


Performed Colonoscopy for the 1st time with Prof Joseph Sung while listening to Celine Dion....

This is Kelvin... he got the hang of colonoscopy very quickily



This is Viola, she had some problem controlling the scope...



This is Shannon... she is good.. (for a girl at least.>^o^<.)....and she managed to navigate in a patient with sub-par bowel preparation..(i.e. a lot of faeces still in the colon

And behold the chinese edition of the Oxford Handbook of medicine..(still in 3rd ed), next to it is my newest 6th ed....hahah

Teacher of the Year Award

Today we have the awrd presentation ceremony for the teacher of the year award. Since I was the class representative last year, Chiu and I had to present the award to some of the winning teachers.

Prof Gregory Cheng, has won 2 awards this year (voted by both yr 3 and yr5) and he is now a master teacher because he has won 5 years in a row. (he is now not elligible for further teacher of year award...just so be fair)



Finally I got a chance to take a photo with him.

Prof KL Chan has also won a award this year and he now also a master teacher. Unfortunately I cannot get a picture with him.

Prof Enders Ng, has got a award as well. He is my favourite surgical teacher. He is very young, highly taleted (got a full professorship before 40). He is very kind. On the other hand, he expect alot from us and is extremely strict towards our performance. This is his 3rd year in a row





This is Prof WH Tam, he is the prof of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, he was extremely gentle and prepare superb powerpoint slide for teaching purpose and he always available for questions.


Finally, we managed to steal a photo with our dean prof Fok. He himself is a master teacher, He gave an 2 hour tutorial every saturday without fail last year during our paediatrics rotation, that might not sound very much, but for the dean of our faculty who has a lot of administration matter to attend to, this is a very demanding duty indeed. He is very very kind and has excellent way to get his point through during his tutorial.

Even more elective students

Suddenly, there is a large influx of foreign exchange students in my School.

Here is the tally:
Singapore 1
New Zealand 3
Australia 4
England 4
Germany 1
China 5
The Netherlands 1

There are now 5 exchange medical students in module now...Comprising 24% of the total medical student body (5 out of 21)


Here you can see Benjimin (left most) from New Zealand and Mary (2nd from Left)from Australia


Here you can see Mary and myself.


Here you can see the 3 medical students (center, 2 guys and 1 girl from NanJing, China.

I wonder why so many of them come in during this time of the year?

Prof KL Chan

Well.. Prof KL Chan is another excellent teacher blessed(btw, I am a free thinker) to our medical school. He is very nice, keen to teach and takes time to prepare for lessons. However, he also knows how to teach us effectively. He doesnt drill us on an exhuastive list of diagnosis, he doesnt force his opinion and way of performing physical examination onto us. He recognises each of us are different and has different approach to the same problem and different ways to examine the same problem.

What he does is to point out our strength and weaknesses and the disadvantage and benefits of our approaches. He put alot of emphasis on the logical approach towards diagnostic process and patient care. His tutorials wont last more than an hour, but, in that magical (truly magical) hour, he teaches us things that takes us years in reading textbooks.

Exchange student from China

Recently our medical school has been flooded by exchange students from overseas. Just in my firm, there is one from New Zealand, and 2 from China. So, considering we only have 16 local student in Firm 2, they compirse 3/19 = 16% of the student population. (obviously, there is a huge sampling error here), I can see around 10 to 20 exchange student around all the time, so they roughly make up 10% of the student population.


Here are the two mainland china students that are in firm 2.



They wear a hybird name tag that has both there original school and CUHK on it... strange

Physical Examination 101

There are different ways to do physical examinations, there are a few really bad ways to do them,

1)Handle the patient together with your friends, 3 to 4 at a time, (as shown in the picture below)
2)Talk about the diagnosis when some of the classmates has not examine the patient
3)This is similar to #2 but, more annoying. Do not talk about heart murmurs before everyone has a go. Murmurs are murmurs, they are soft and sometimes requires some imagination to be able to pick them up.


The good way:
See it for yourself

This is Yin Kei showing doctor Vincent Wong how to examine this patient's eye. Looks funny right? They correct way doesnt look all that cool after all.

Prof Cheng - Reloaded

Today I met prof Cheng after the Medical Grand Round, and we had a casual chat. He mention that Mr Wong, the 80 yrs old gentleman who refused his treatment and blood transfusion has called and was admitted for treatment.

I was trilled to hear this from him, and from Prof Cheng's tone and expression, he was very happy about that as well. It is totally normaly for a medical student to be so passionate towards the patients, but prof cheng impressed us with his compassion and care for his patients.

I think that is what makes being a doctor so satisfying and meaningful, seeing our patients comply to our treatment and alleviate their pain and problems. At the same time, we have to keep our hearts warm and brains sharp

Prof Gregory Cheng

Prof Gregory Cheng is the Chief of Haematology in Firm2. He was a victim of the SARS epidemic when our teaching hospital was hit very hard in 2003. I attended his haematology clinci today.

We have seen quite a few cases with haemolytic anaemia, aplastic anaemia, myeloproliferative disease and acute lymphoma. He spent a lot of times between each patient to discuss and teach us about the various aspects of the diseases that we have just seen in the previous patient.

The last patient is an 80 years old gentlement, Mr Wong, with acute lymphoblastic lymphoma, he has got very bad bone pain for 5 years due to the extend of his disease. He wheelchair bound and very weak. He came today with very severe anaemia and a very tired looking body. He has refused any blood taking and any medication except pain-killers. All in all that showed how bad he was managed, nobody has paid any attention towards his pain and to relieve his symptoms, so now he has lost all his hope in living and his trust in doctors.

Prof Cheng has spent 30 minute trying to pursuade Mr Wong for blood transfusion and admission to the hospital for pain management. Mr Wong refused. Prof Cheng has then went on to allow him to have outpatient transfusion in his office and promised Mr Wong a very short hospital stay just to relieve his pain. Mr Womg once again refused. Despite all of Prof Cheng's effort, Mr Wong just wont have anything other than pain-killers, Prof Cheng gave Mr Wong his telephone number so that he can be contacted anytime when Mr Wong wishes to have a tranfusion.

Mr Wong has not wasted any of our time even when he refused all of our treatment, he has shown and reminded us how important is to care for the patient rather than just managing the disease. Prof Cheng has shown us what a good doctor should have done, and he is exactly the kind of teacher that we should have in the medical school.

The whole clinic lasted from 1030 to 1430. It could have ended earlier if Prof Cheng has not spent so much time teaching us and talking to Mr Wong. We were very hungry towards the end of the clinic but I still think it is very worthwhile.

First day in Firm 2

Today is my first day in Medical Firm 2, there are a total of 3 firms in the department of medicine and therapeutics of my university

Firm 2 consists of the Division of Gastroenterology & Hepatology, the Division of Cardiology and the Division of Haematology.

Firm 2 is headed by Prof Sanderson, the chief and cardiology, he is very nice. The famous prof Joseph Sung is also in Firm 2 and he is the head of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatoloy. I think I will be seeing him quite a lot this month.

Charity Walk for the Tsunami

Today, the medical and nursing people of hong kong has organised a fund raising charity walk for the Tsunami vicitims. Our faculty dean prof fok has urge us to join such occassion and a lot of us has turned up for it. I think we have raised about 1 million hong kong dollars in a morning.. not bad right?


This photo shows my girl friend and I at the Starting point of the walk




Here is a bunch of my classmates



Here is the same bunch of my friends with Prof Yuen, He is a paediatric haematologist, He taught us last year during our paediatric module, he was very kind and keen to teach us.



Bunch of my friends during the walk

banana split

Well... today we have to eat bananas, so that we can suture them back into one piece....strange....

Last day in Shatin Hospital Geriatrics + Bus Stop Posters

Also has some photos to show today:




This is a very interesting, funny yet practical nursing aid I found in one of the geriatric wards in SH. It is a table with each patient's need and ability plotted on it, so that nursing staff all has an idea on how to provide the best care. There are small icons says "need help in dressing", "able to walk", "cannot swallow", etc.




This photo shows the 2 female memebers of my group, Shannon and Yin kei, sorry for the blurred image, all I wanted to show is that Ying Kei actually brought a suitcase to SH...crazy.





This photo shows a bus stop poster right outside SH, actually these posters has been all around Hong Kong since the SARS epidemic early last year. They were meant to provide some morale support for the healthcare workers during that period. For the benefits of those who cannot read Chinese, the photo actually shows a hospital porter resting on a bench wearing a mask. The message says: "He could have chosen to leave, but he stayed with the rest of the team to fight for HK". We must keep in mind that the porter actually earns much less than a doctor, and they do not have as much morale obligation to fight an epidemic as doctors and nurses (at least that is what I think). They have chosen to stay on their own accord. They are indeed very brave.




This is another bus stop poster from the SARS time. This one shows our former Dean of Faculty of Medicine CUHK, Prof Sydney Chung. (He has moved to Pupua New Guinea since October this year to pioneer endoscopy in that country) The Prinice of Wales of Hospital, our principle teaching hospital was striked fast and hard. Some of the students and teaching staff has also fallen sick. Prof Chung was working very hard to fight the epidemic, but due limied knowlege of SARS and various political and economical reasons, he was under tremendous pressure, yet he never yield. During one of the press conference, he sheded tears when he informed the press about the community spreading of the disease. He is really a modern hero, a superb doctor and the best teacher I ever met (he taught by being a role model for all of us to follow). BTW, the chinese reads: We were deeply touched and grateful to all the frontline medical workders.

Show and Tell

I have taken a lot of photos today.. so I just show them and tell the story behind..



This photo shows Shannon in an Old Age Home that we have visited today, it also shows a resident of that OAH.




This photo shows the interior of the same OAH from a different angle, Shannon and I were told to assest one of the resident's mobility and stability, becuase the doctor is hoping to upgrade her walking aid from a frame (with 4 legs, you hold it in front of you with 2 hands) to a stick (well... just a stick....I should have called it "down-grade") if she is able to walk properly. She did quite well, she might be able to use a stick and walk the stairs that were unsurmountable previously due to her walking frame (you cannot do stairs with frames.)That might help her to go out doors and do shopping on her own.





This photo shows the large balcony that the OAH has, it is a private OAH and it cost around HK$5000/mth to stay there, quite cheap. We visit the OAH as part of our geriatic medicine teaching. You can see 4 empty chairs on the balcony that were arranged in a semi-circle, we were sitting in those chairs and had a tutorial in the sunny balcony. My first ever tutorial out-door, quite cool. althought an old man came and accused us of using his chair...




Here you can see the back of Shannon, she had a acute attack of severe tummy ache..while we were waiting for a lunch time hospital audit meeting (dont ask me why medical students should attend such meeting). The tummy ache is most probably due to the heavy breakfast she ate in the morning before the OAH visit. But.... she ate even more during the lunch (maybe because the meeting-lunch is free?)




Here you can see a patient who is tetraplegic. He can only move his neck and face. He is wheelchair-bound. But, he never gave up and uses all his time in the Shatin hospital to work on his computer. It looks to me he is writing a book. He also has a very good demeaner and very polite towards us. We were having a tutorial in the room that he was using, he quickily apologised for the noise he made and hurried to finished his work to let us enjoy a quiet room.




This is a clock face drawn by a patient with a previous stroke. She had a stroke in the part of brain that controls vision, of the right side.(for the medic geek out there, A Right Occipital Ischaemic Stroke) So, she is unable to see things on her left side (Left Homonymous Hemianopia), that is why the clock has all the letter on the right side (where she can see).




(this image has been updated) This is Hermen, who had got his right lower wisdom tooth taken out today. He had a large swelling of his right cheek and unable to speak very well. He couldnt even interview the old lady who drew the clock face...poor thing.




Lastly, a desperate house officer looking for a Assistent Interm just before her holiday. She actually stuck this advertisment next to the elevator of our hostel...