Inspirational video - Nick Vujicic

A must-see video clip.

Effect of medical TV shows.

When physicians at an Alberta hospital asked why so many medical students and residents were using a faulty technique for inserting life-saving breathing tubes in patients, they received an unexpected answer: It's television's fault.

Many of the doctors in training said they had learned the procedure from watching medical dramas. And a subsequent analysis of the show ER revealed its fictional MDs and nurses performed intubations incorrectly almost every time.

Read more

It is horrifying to know that some medical students and junior doctors learned few of life-saving procedural skills via television, but this is the reality. In fact, I believe that many people learned CPR incorrectly from TV shows. Hopefully this current trend can be corrected. Otherwise, many medical errors will happen in the future.

Spring forward, fall backward

It is the time of the year when people start to look around and ask for confirmation on when is the daylight saving period.

Daylight saving period is the time when you changed your clock either one hour forward or backward. It may seem confusing initially but when you are used to this annual change, it is no longer something that is amusing and perplexing.

For Victoria, the daylight saving period will ends on next Sunday, 5th of April 2009. Previously, daylight saving period ends on last Sunday of March, but they changed it last year. Now, the daylight saving period will end on first Sunday of April.

People always get confused on whether to add one more hour or remove one hour from their clock. This is the mnemonic that I have been using in the past few years.

Spring forward, fall backward.

During spring, you add one more hour and in autumn, you remove one hour from your clock. If you are able to remember this, daylight saving period will no longer be confusing.

Muslim Health Professionals and Students Dinner

I attended this event last saturday and have been delaying to write about this for about a week.

This event was organised by Hayaat Project, a new NGO in Melbourne. I believed their main aim is to improve health care system and solving various problems relating to accessing health care for Australian Muslims.

Dinner
The event was held in a Turkish Restaurant. We were waiting for hours for the main meal to be served. The service was terrible and all the participants were hungry to the extent that we have to eat the side dishes first.

We were at top floor but it seems the air conditioning does not work or the restaurant has poor air circulation. We were literally roasted throughout the dinner. It was quite hot that few of the participants had to leave early.

I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone in the future.

Discussion
There were several interesting point being discussed among the participants.

1. Depression or to be specific, post-natal depression among Muslims women not being recognised as an important medical problem among Muslim scholars. They were usually told that this is the work of devils.
   
2. Problems accessing Muslim health networks in Melbourne. This is an important communication issue that requires a thorough discussion for it to be solved.
   
3. Palliative and funeral care for Muslim patients in hospital
4. Awareness among Non-Muslim health professionals about Islam and various Muslim cultures.
5. Lack of psychosocial support especially for new immigrants who can't speak English very well.
   

All of these issues were important and highlight that lots of effort need to be made to improve Muslim health-related issues around Melbourne.

p/s: One of the participants reminded us that many Muslims nowadays are trying so hard to communicate with many Muslims around their area but many forgot to know their own next-door neighbours.

Emergency Medicine

I'm currently doing three weeks of Emergency Medicine. This rotation is one of the rotations that I've been looking forward to do since pre-clinical years. It is an interesting yet challenging at the same time. It can sharpened your skills in diagnosing wide variety of acute and life-threatening medical conditions and at the same time, provide me with lots of ample opportunity to do procedural skills.

There are two shifts everyday and each shift lasts for about 6 hours. Each people have at maximum, three shift per week. For this week, I have done two morning shift and one night shift. Next week, I will do two night shift and one day shift.

From my observation so far, morning shift is not as busy as night shift. However, there are times when the night shift is lacking of new admissions. Sometimes, it can be boring when you don't have anything to do but you can always clerk the patient and present the case to the registrar or to the consultants.

My group is quite enthusiastic and have managed to do scheduled rosters for weekends as well. I might be a little bit busy in these three weeks.

Medical Abbrevations

I will finish my current rotation tomorrow. Overall, this rotation is felt like an extended summer holiday for me, since there is so much free time in a 6-weeks rotation. This are the medical abbreviations I learned in Rehabilitation, Aged Care, Palliative Care and Psychiatry of Old Age (RAPP).

ACAS - Aged Care Assessment Services
AFO - Ankle-Foot-Orthosis
APATT - Aged Psychiatry Assessment and Treatment Team
BIST - Behaviour Intervention Support Team
BPSD - Behavioural and Pyschological Symptoms of Dementia
CACP - Community Aged Care Package
CDAMS - Cognitive, Dementia and Memory Services
CDDHV - Centre for Developmental Disability Health Victoria
CIBIS - Clinicans' Interview-Based Impression of Status
CIND - Cognitive impairment not dementia [Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)]
CRU - Community Residential Unit
CUG - cystourethrography
DBMAS - Dementia Behaviour Management Advisory Service
EPOA - Enduring Power of Attorney
FIM - Functional Independence Measure
FISS - Family Intervention Support Unit
GDS - Geriatric Depression Scale
HACC - Home And Community Care
HARP - Hospital Admission Risk Program [PDF]
IDC - Indwelling urethral catheter
IVP - Intravenous Pyelogram
KAFO - Knee-Ankle-Foot-Orthosis
MMSE - Mini Mental State Examination
NWB - Non-Weight Bearing
OPA - Office of the Public Advocate
PAS - Psychogeriatric Assessment Scales
PGAT - Psychogeriatric Assessment Teams
PWB - Partial Weight Bearing
RDNS - Royal District Nursing Service
RECIPE - REsidential Care Intervention Program in the Elderly [PDF]
RUDAS - Rowland Universal Dementia Assessment Scale
SPC - Suprapubic catheter
SRS - Supported Residential Services
SSA - Shared Supported Accommodation
THA - Total Hip Arthroplasty
TWB - Touch Weight Bearing
VCAT - Victoria Civil and Administrative Tribunal

Fireworks

More pictures.

Some of the best shots that I took with my old camera. In hindsight, my place was not the best spot to take pictures.

Blog Statistics

Since I don't know what else to write at the moment, I will write the statistics regarding this blog. I have been using Google Analytics since August 2006.

Statistics (August 2006 - March 2009)

Total visit : 19906 (Pretty low and this is expected since I don't write anything that can attract large audience)
Total Pageviews: 28439
New Visitors: 68.16%

Top 10 referring sites

1. blogger-templates.blogspot.com
   
2. images.google.com
   
3. Hayad
   
4. hafiz238.efx2.com
   
5. Reazal Effendy
   
6. Sarah Mohd Shukor
7. gambrine.blogspot.com
   
8. Petaling Street
   
9. Sofie Nur
   
10. Minci
    

Top 10 Keywords

1. kembara di bumi melbourne
2. e-novel malay
3. hafiz238
4. ladybug layouts
5. erti kemerdekaan
6. aurat wanita
7. ladybug layout
8. candid syndrome
9. kembara
10. kelebihan al mathurat

Top 20 weirdest keywords

1. misteri awan cerah bertukar gelap
2. klara causen
3. broken heart layouts
4. gambar mercu tanda di malaysia
5. statistik penggunaan telefon bimbit di malaysia
   
6. kompas cecair
7. perkara perkara pelik di bumi
8. "friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity" with explanation
9. hate medical students
10. 36c titis
11. agaknya bila tarikh aidil fitri
12. contoh panggilan sayang
13. di mana lalat tidur
14. ex-kisas student blog
15. excuses for being late, typical
16. kisah pelik dan benar
17. melapah manusia
18. nama website untuk cari map di google
19. rumah berhantu di england
20. tahun ni korang beraya di mana
    

Top 20 pages (in bracket, number of pageviews)

1. mnemonic for forearm muscles and bone (899)
2. archive July 2005 (758)
3. Interpreting Electrocardiogram [ECG] (757)
4. medical abbreviations (662)
5. useful links for new blogger (500)
6. archive January 2005 (495)
7. another online novel (491)
8. ladybug (363)
9. diencephalon (345)
10. ladybug red theme (279)
11. archive November 2004 (256)
12. 100 tahun meneroka sejarah (209)
13. few blogger hacks (206)
14. archive February 2005 (204)
15. how to migrate from old classic blogger layout to new blogger layout (194)
16. archive March 2007 (191)
    
17. archive August 2005 (159)
18. Google Reader shared items hack (151)
19. broken heart syndrome (136)
20. photoshop tutorial pattern 1 (135)
    

Top 10 Commentators (I only started to use Blogger commenting system on 26 May 2007. Previously I used Haloscan. The figure in the bracket represents the number of comments made on Blogger commenting system)

1. Hayad (61)
2. mosh (33) + moshimoshi (23) = 56 [mosh and moshimoshi is the same person. However, the system that I used to count is based on the username.]
3. aria ayumi (27) + diya (25) = 52
   
4. Chem (36)
5. Ummu Layth (34)
6. Sofie Nur (30)
7. arsaili (29)
8. Sarah Mohd Shukor (26)
9. minci (23)
10. farah yusri (15)