Resource - Doctors and Medical Students

I often come across emails and chat messages which ask me things like: "Hey, please tell me about the medical course", "Can you tell me is it stressful to study medicine?" or "Is it good to study medicine in Melbourne?". Throughout the years, I always try to ascertain those questions to the best of my ability; however, sometimes it's just hard to do so, especially when I am busy or when things get excessively repetitive.

In the process of reading questions and writing responses, sometimes the irony strikes me - some people write to my email, saying that "Hey I found your email address through your blog, and I would like to ask you about the medical course."

The irony is that, I am expected to write about my life in brief in a single email, when they could have gotten all the info right away where they came from - my blog, the best place they could learn all about my life, the place where I pen down all my cheers and tears in the most minute detail and the most genuine expression. No amount of summary in an email is going to give them more details than what I have written in my blog throughout the years. Glimpsing through my previous posts, I have shared quite a fair amount of my life experience. Among others are my first encounter with dead bodies in anatomy class, our funny practical classes involving urine, some complaints about some dreadful aspects of my course, how I got deeply touched by some stories and so on. Nerdy as it seems, I even did some "post-exam reviews" after the previous two semester exams. Who knows, some people might find them useful.

Apart from my blog, there are countless blogs out there, written by real doctors and real medical students. Each of those blogs is a diary, where these people's personal lives are well chronicled in the cyberspace, waiting for you to discover. Instead of reading general e-mail responses like "doctors are generally busy and exhausted"; by reading real-life stories, you are able to understand why they are busy, why doctors enjoy or dislike their jobs, and by that you could decide whether or not you should choose this career.

Some people might find it hard to find medicine-related resources, so I decided that I would write this post as a sort of "portal" to people who would like to find more information about medicine, life as a medical student, or in particular, life as a medical student in Melbourne.

In my blog:

• Posts labelled "Medicine"
  - All medicine-related posts in my blog.
  
  
• Introduction to Medicine in Melbourne University
  - A general overview of my course, written in Chinese.
  
  
• "Learning to Become a Doctor"
  - One of the most touching articles I have read about medicine.

Some of my coursemates:

• Chong Chyn
• Jane
• Jian Wey
• Jing Yi
• Ka Lip
• Kimberly
• Li Chia
• Melissa
• Omega

Medical students in other universities:

• Wee Loon, Nooi Hoay (Monash University, Australia)
• Ru Hui (Adelaide University, Australia)
• Way Siong, Hai Xing (University of New South Wales, Australia)
  
• Patrick (Future student, Cambridge University, UK)
• Student blogroll in Malaysian Medical Resources - A long list of medical students' blogs.

Doctors:

• Doctor blogroll in Malaysian Medical Resources

Just a few words to wrap up this post: while this list is compiled for the convenience of people who want to read more about the life of people involved in the healthcare system, I would like to advise everyone to avoid e-mailing those people before you read their posts. If you really can't find what you are looking for in their posts, please write to them politely, and do include specific questions instead of vague open questions like "Tell me about your life as a medical student in Adelaide University". This kind of question is too hard to answer. And the bottom line of asking for help is, while it's reasonable to expect courtesy from people whom you write to, it's not their obligation to answer all your inquiries especially if you are not polite or sincere in the first place.


p/s: If your blog is listed here and you would like me to remove it for any reason , please write to me and I will delete the link immediately. I respect your privacy.