Report on elective attachment at Sibu Hospital

12 December 2009

On 7th December 2009, me and my friends started an elective attachment at Sibu Hospital for a duration of 4 days, which is aimed to help us to gain more knowledge about the field of medicine by observing procedures done by the doctors and staffs in the hospital. We gathered at the lobby of Sibu Hospital 8 o’clock in the morning and got ourselves ready for the attachment. We went to the administrative office and were asked to see Mdm Betty Ngui, the secretary to the Director of the hospital. I took the lead and led my friends to the office and proceeded to madam Betty’s room. Mdm Betty was a friendly and helpful lady. She was near to her retiring age, yet still proactive in administrative works. She read through our letters and documents and asked us to see the director first. We entered the Director’s room and then was given a briefing. Due to some problems, we are not actually been approved to attach at Sibu Hospital. However, the kind secretary and the director had allowed us to do so.

The first morning, we started off by waiting in front of the director’s office for the letters to each departments. Six of us were separated into groups of two and each assigned to different department each day. Me and Chee Huat were in the same group and our first department was the O & G department. After Mdm Betty printed out all the documents, we were showed our way to our respective department. We separated into different ways then. Chee Huat and me went towards the labour room and looked for Dr. Marcus Kang , the specialist on duty in that department. We spent about an hour to search for him from ward to ward and at last, we found him through a kind and helpful house officer. A million thanks to that particular house officer for he is really a very nice person. After meeting with Dr. Marcus, we were instructed to go to the labour room for half a day and then towards the gynaecology ward for another half day. At the labour room, we reported to Dr. Adriana who was the MO in charge there. We was given permission to go round the ward and to observe the procedures. We observed how the doctors assess the condition of the patients prior to delivering and also witnessed 2 delivering being carried out. One of them involved the use of the vacuum section when normal procedures came to no avail. The MO in charge decided to use vacuum to suck out the foetus after a few attempt to deliver the baby naturally. The section was done by attaching a suction pump-like instrument on the head of the baby and the possible risk of the use of section was explained to the patient concerned. This delivering took about 2 hours as a whole and the stitching of torn wound took another an hour. The baby’s face was found to be abnormal, however, the specialist concerned will tried to fix the problem especially the abnormality around the month. The second delivering was done fast as the baby was delivered in more or least 30 minutes. We did not observe fully this delivering due to that it took place at about the same time the first delivering taken place. After the delivering, we observe how the nurse handle the baby and clean the baby. The babies were then sent off to the paediatric ward to be observed. We left the labour room for lunch at about 1:00pm. In the afternoon, we were instructed to go to the gynaecology ward. We spent our afternoon there till 5 o’clock in the afternoon and left for home. Basically, we observed the routine of the doctors and nurses.

To be continue........... :)