Preparing For Medicine, Biomedicine, And More
JOHOR BAHRU – The Asian Medical Student Association (AMSA) at Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia (NUMed) recently concluded its NUMed PreMed Workshop 2018, a two-day preparatory course for aspiring medical students. The workshop, which took place on 15 and 16 December 2018 at the university’s campus, garnered a total of 88 people consisting of 55 participants and 33 members of the student committee.
The event, which was part of AMSA’s effort to materialise their vision: “Knowledge, Action and Friendship”, was aimed at offering potential medical students early exposure of or insights into medical or biomedical life. When asked about the motivation behind the event, Organising Chairperson Khoo Jin Khang revealed how his own experience participating in a previous PreMed workshop left a significant impact to him.
“I was greatly inspired by the words of a doctor who spoke during the workshop. It was a defining moment for me, and I too hope that others interested in pursuing a career in the medical field will find the answers they are looking for or at least get a better idea of how it is like,” he said.
Khoo kicked off the workshop with a briefing of the itinerary, safety measures and rules of the event. This was followed by a warm welcome and the officiation of the event by NUMed’s Provost and CEO, Professor Chris Baldwin. President of AMSA, Goh Jin Cheng, then addressed the participants with a sharing on the association’s vision and efforts for future medical students.
An ice-breaking session got participants mingling with their group mates and warmed up for the coming activities. They were asked to answer a medley of medical questions in “Let’s Hoot Yourself”, hosted on the Kahoot website. Besides this, participants were introduced to basic clinical skills through talks by NUMed’s lecturers and clinical skills learning sessions. Clinical skills were divided into lab sessions covering topics such as the seven steps of hand-washing, proper pulse-reading, proper methods of performing Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and using the Automated External Defibrillator (AED), taking blood pressure, as well as dressing and bandaging wounds. At each lab, facilitators demonstrated medical treatments on manikins. Participants were guided to practice these medical treatments themselves and also take part in role-play scenarios with mock patients.
The next day followed with a medical experience sharing, mock interviews, and more in-depth talks and clinical skills sessions. During a session called “Clinical Skills in Action”, participants got to carry out emergency treatments on fake patients. With guidance, these “doctors” were given the opportunity to tend to their “patients” by recording the patients’ histories and applying emergency treatments for conditions such as heatstroke, burns, heart attacks, allergies, asthma and hypoglycaemia, at times providing first aid relief or bandaging for fractures.
As with previous workshops, the NUMed PreMed Workshop 2018 was well-received, successfully providing participants with a realistic, first-hand look at practicing medicine. For more information regarding upcoming NUMed PreMed workshops or NUMed’s programmes, visit www.ncl.ac.uk/numed/.
