Palliative medicine was actually first suggested to me by a friend while we were medical students. He had his day in Arthur Rank Hospice as part of the rotation through various specialties and he rang me on the phone to say "Grace, I have found the specialty for you." He clearly thought I was well-suited for it. And he was right, when I had my day in Arthur Rank Hospice, I was really drawn to the specialty... What particularly drew me was the focus on the patient as a person with both physical and non-physical needs, rather than just a physical body, and also the high consideration given to quality of life.
To explore this interest further, I spent part of my elective doing palliative medicine in Singapore. Through this, I realised that a good palliative medicine physician had to have a strong foundation of general medical knowledge due to the range of problems that present to palliative care. I also appreciated the importance of good history-taking and clinical examination skills in assessing a patient. This was a relief to me as I was worried that my medical knowledge and skills will be laid aside if I went into this specialty. I worked alongside palliative care doctors who were both passionate about and excellent at what they did. Dr Cynthia Goh and Dr Noreen Chan deserve particular mention at this point, as they were the consultants I worked with during my elective.
After graduation from medical school, I worked in a series of medical and surgical jobs. Throughout this time, I took a special interest in patients who were terminally ill and had been, as it were, left to die as nothing more could be done for them. I enjoyed liaising with other members of the multi-professional team and gained great satisfaction from being able to improve the quality of life of these patients who had a limited prognosis.
I wanted to experience how palliative medicine was like on the ground before committing to training in the specialty, so I organised a period of “out-of-programme experience” in St Christopher’s Hospice, which I have thoroughly enjoyed... more about St Christopher's another day.
Anyways, so here I am, working in St Christopher's Hospice. And I've got a place in the palliative medicine training programme in the Eastern Deanery, which starts in August 2009... which I am really looking forward to.
I am starting this blog as I hope to share my experiences as a trainee in palliative medicine.
No comments:
Post a Comment