Community Medicine: The Practical That I Hate

That day, we have to prepare early as the bus will get going by 8.30 am. That night, i flipped through all the spotters written in the record and memorize each and every answer to the question. That night is the first night that we actually preparing for community medicine practical.So, i had no idea what to do, in detail. I had not made any mistakes before and there is no possible way that i could improve or not to make the same mistakes this time because we never had any exams for practicals before. I can't really blame them for NOT having a LOT of practical exams during sessional. I understood , that it is a tedious job for the department to prepare the materials and allocating houses etc for each student.Not to forget the answer sheet is way difficult for the lecturers to mark, you know the lecturers are very old, true story. Hmm, they say why bother coming to class to teach when students were not even  interested to listen what they say  in class. I've always sit in front and blurr all the time. I've always felt bored and unease with people whispering behind,some were reading novels, the noisy drill at the upper floor and with  teachers yelling in front.

I make this entry to remind myself what to do and what not to do for exam. So, i shall start from the beginning of community medicine practical revision.

Revision Time - I have to read the 66 spotters, 8 epidemiological exercises and  statistical exercise. It took for about 5 hours to complete revision as well as memorizing everything by heart. Next, flip through all topic related to field case. For example,maternal  infant morbidity, nutrition,housing, primary health center, environment and a little bit of other topics.

What to Bring - Bring stethoscope,scale, calculator, language book for kannada malayalam and a sheet of copied format of field case. 

Our practical exam consist of 5 part. The field visit to local area, case exercise, spotters, case viva and theory viva..

Field Visit-

The bus goes by 8.30 am. We are not supposed to take our record or bag to the field as it may be considered cheating. However, i just kept mine in my bag and carry it in bus. Well, all equipment needed is in there and i am reluctant to leave my lovely beloved new bag without proper supervision in college. Anyway, we arrived at the supposed area by 9 am. and began to go separate ways under lecturers guide to allocated houses. Each student got one house each. All students are required to take the cases independently without help. For international students and students who did not speak local languages, we were told that translators will be allocated for each student during final exam. But, for that day, there were no translators or lecturers to help us with the translation and thus, i had to figure out everything myself. 

 I got an infant case in a house with family of 13 members. We were given 45 minit to finish the family case and the clinical case. I am so lucky because that day, because they can speak Kannada which is very easy to learn and understand. Plus, the family had a card that list all the members in the family. The card states everything i needed.but, the real problem is i had no idea what is it because it is written in Kannada. Thank God, the card had pictures and numbers on them and i simply 'cook' the rest info on the sheet. The vital info such as name,age,occupation, relation, education level,house environment  and income can be easily acquired. The real trouble is when i needed to figure out the nutrition and family planning. If only i bring the language manual book, i think it would be a lot easier to deal with them. I know  my sheet was totally messed up because it was my first time writing it. I forgot the nutrition table and the answer sheet looked horrible and unsystematic. I managed to finish the interview, physical examination of the infant and write the sheet. When i finished, we went to college at 10am. Attendance were taken in the bus  and the case sheets were given to respective guide lecturers.

Case Exercise

This exercise consist of 2 epidemiological case and one statistic case both to be written in separate answer sheet. The limit to answer the question is 40 minutes. From 20 students in the exam hall, i could see that everyone is trying their best to answer as fast and as they could. Some are like me, trying to figure out what to do without a calculator for statistic question. How could i forgot about the most important thing in practical? Pfftt... Obviously, all the equation and formulas should be remembered.

Spotter

Spotter session started at 11 am.For this part, we have to identify each spotter given on the table within 1 minute. 10 spotters from 66 spotters given in the record must be memorized well. No need to remember calories as we can see the spotters right before entering the exam hall. It will be pretty obvious. Pay attention to drugs and parasite spotters. I messed up a lot for drugs and parasite. So study that more!

Field visit case viva is easy. The batch was separated into two groups. Each group for one examiner.I am among the last students.So, i had ample time to read for the viva. Present the case like we usually do in the clinical subject if the examiner ask you to. If not, take your time to think the answer and answer with confidence. Do not hesitate to say that you do not know to questions you have no idea about. Study everything related to the clinical case. Since mine was infant morbidity case, he kept asking about the antropometry measurement. Well, i  didn't have the wight and height scale that time. I decided to cook everything up not realizing that he actually pay attention towards these  silly little things. I am busted for those question and end up giving excuses that i just jot down what the mother had said and i told him about the languange problem. It seems that he doesn't even care. Maybe next time i should just cheat something but make sure whatever i cooked up make some sense. In the end he gave me just 25/35. Well, quite good i think.

Theory viva. Gosh! It could be anything!Just read more on primary health center and diseases. They asked me this:What is primary health center? What is the meaning of disease? How many type of epidemic do you know? How to prevent rheumatic fever? What is transmissible disease? etc...

So, that is all what i can say about practical. i'm  pretty sure that i messed up a lot.

  Otoke?(What to do? = in Korea) 

Want to do it again? Oh hell yeah! I have to have at least one more time to do it right before the finals. Please don't screw it up next time okayh!