dermatology........

******this post has been long overdue,but finally i managed to put it through.....to those who were expecting this one.....sorry for the delay********

Dermatology, my first posting was my optional posting.Ichose it with two things in mind..one during my MBBS i did not have much exposure practically & secondly it is an upcoming branch so in case I, by any chance chose it as my post graduation subject, it would serve as a precursor......(hmmmmm.....ya right....thats happening!!.....hehhe).
first day and we had to report to our SRs (senior residents).On that day only two of us made it on time (due to unavoidable circumstances the rest 4-5 reported later).First the SR made us sit in his room along with 2 PG students, 1 more intern & 7-8 3rd year students. Add to this atleast 10 patients in the room. Believe me it was crowded. it had started to become suffocating for everyone.After 10 mins or so we were told to go to the minor OT(operation theatre)/procedure room. Searching through serpentine queues of patients and maze like area for the room, we reached to find a 1st year PG student and a nurse & no patient( well that was a rare sight cause every day after that the room was never empty). The PG student Dr.Jug was very happy; actually so happy that he could not contain himself & he started chatting keeping aside the book on Leprosy that he was till now reading!! Anyhow the patients started to trickle in & Jug took the responsibility of teaching us......from cutting sutures to giving intralesional injections, taking scrappings and biopsies .....we did it all.Not together or on one day but over a period of few days......for all this we are very thankful!!

The next day again we reported to the SR's room.Now there were 7 of us......3 of us remained in the room n the rest 4 were distributed amongst other rooms of specialists, etc. Now we had our opportunity to see a variety of dermatological cases. But fate had other things in store for us!!Everytime we would get to see the patient, the SR would make us sit.he must have asked us to sit atleast 7 or 8 times till he issued us an ultimatum that we better stick to our chairs!Now we were in a dilemma.From the college where we came no senior or professor was ever so admant to make us sit!!So we felt that we were being given a lot of respect.On the other hand we were absolutely depressed that we were not being able to see cases.

Anyhow by the end of the day the chaos had come to an end cause a new schedule was charted out dividing us into groups of three & distributing us in OPD rooms n ward. well in the ward we had an experience that neither we nor our patients will ever forget.we had to do sampling that is prepare vials, withdraw blood etc. Having said this i would like to mention that please consider that we were absolute novices & i'm not trying to portray the situation in a jestful manner....When it came to withdrawing blood ....on the first day Dr.Jug demonstrated on how to do the procedure....next day we were on our own.....We took up the task n with full confidence...after all it had been very easy atleast to see.......

But ..........yes.......BUT......it took numerous unsuccessful attempts from each one of us to withdraw blood from the very first patient only.Kudos to him for having tolerated us!!Same story got repeated on the next patient & the next & the next .........But finally we managed.....

Next day our SRs informed us that some blood had clotted which shouldnt have happened for investigations like blood sugar.......anyhow we were spared ........that day also we could not withdraw bood in one successful go!!
By 3rd day our SR had a grim look on his face.Clotted blood hampered the reports for some patients again & he gave us a lecture (a mild one) & one to another PG student( a harsher one) stating thay since we were new it ws not our fault but her responsibility to make sure that everything went well ....Anyways by now the patients were scared of us and had already complained to the SRs & no one wanted us to withdraw blood from them.....some were actually giving us pointers on how we should go about the whole procedure....like how to tie tourniquet,etc..Ofcourse both patients and we were relieved of our misery when we were to change to the OPD.

OPD went extremely well.We saw numerous cases....we excelled in diagnosing psoriasis, P.versicolor, Scabies,P.rosea,leprosy, alopecia areata,warts,melasma,etc,etc.....

meanwhile we had befriended Jug & another PG student Aru. Both of them were very helpful & not only taught us practically but gave us pointers on how to tackle the post graduate entrance exams ....esp Dr.Aru......thank you for that...i will make use of all the advice!!

All in all it was a good learning experience & i was glad to have Dr.Aru n Dr. Jug as my friends.We all were also happy that our seniors were satisfied with our performance.

As my first posting i'll always remember it for more than one reason...........