Stand-out

Form after form after form.. the Faculty's way of saying welcome to your general practice rotation. We had our orientation day today and I swear we must have received about 50 pages worth of forms to sort out in less than a month and I thought I would have a serious opportunity to catch up on my work for Medicine and Surgery. It looks like, at least for this month, that idea has been blown out of the water.

Most of the presentations were on what general practice is and its importance - like we needed to be reminded. Yes, it is the most difficult specialty to practice and yet one of the easiest to become. If practiced properly and taken seriously by doctors in training, general practice is a worthy challenge.

One presentation was on prescriptions and how to write them out. It was interesting and as can be expected by this Faculty, was our first session on the topic in the course. Even though we've spent two and a half years throwing drugs at people in scenario after scenario, they've finally wondered how the hell we're supposed to do that in real life.

The doctor gave us a particular scenario about a 9 year old boy with otitis externa and otitis media - infections of the outer and middle ear respectively. She asked us which antibiotic we would prescribe this patient and gave us multiple choices to choose from. After that, she generously showed us the therapeutic guidelines' protocol for the treatment of each infection and for the otitis media, the first-line antibiotic was amoxicillin. Yes, otitis media is more important than externa, but that doesn't mean we ignore it - which is what most all students did.

After we had the chance to discuss our decisions with our neighbours (and I explained my decision to my neighbours), the doctor asked who chose amoxicillin? Everyone I could see put their hand up.

She nodded in agreement and then said did anyone chose anything else? So I put my hand up. What did you choose?


I chose cephalexin.


Why did you choose that?


Because according to both protocols, cephalexin is second-line treatment for both but treats both problems and the efficacy compared with amoxicillin in otitis media is not reduced.


Fantastic! That's exactly what we did using exactly the same logic as you and the boy got better! Well done. It's good to know people are thinking outside the box.

That was my moment of today. I was so happy, even though some colleagues mocked me by saying "yeah good work buddy"

In fact, it was such a great feeling to finally hear someone say something so reinforcing, reassuring that about time... things are moving forward. I am developing and in due time, I will develop further.

Positive feedback really goes a very long way. It's a lesson for me to offer it whenever I can.

Smiling in a lecture never felt so good.