Auscultating : What is it for you?

Stepping into clinical years seemed to have push all vet students beyond their limits.

Catching up with grades, picking up skills while not forgetting them, and the hardest one among the bunch; deciding our direction.

Veterinary medicine, unlike human medicine offers several different sub branches depending on their species including:
1- Feline and canine medicine

2- Exotic medicine
3- Wildlife and conservation medicine

4- Marine medicine
5- Aquatic medicine
6- Avian medicine
7- Equine medicine
8- Ruminant medicine

9- Population medicine

with each medicine branch of species, there are sub-branches which we usually see in human medicine:
1- Internal medicine
2- Anesthesiology and emergency medicine

3- Radiology
4- Cardiology
5- Hepatobiliary

6- Urogenital
7- Neonatal/Pediatric
8- Dermatology

9- Pulmonary
10- Sports and orthopaedics

And the list goes on.

So the question now is, what is it for you? In this case what is it for me?

Looking through profiles these days, I sometimes do wonder if it would be easier if I'd just taken human medicine and have a diploma in aesthetic medicine aka plastic surgery and make a good living in the city as a typical city boy.

But I feel like I wouldn't be done there. I will have decent living and great pay, but life is pretty meaningless, at least from my end. While I've done the 16personalities.com test and found out I am a ESFJ-T, I know I wouldn't be satisfied with just the usual decent living.

Add that to my recent exposure to multiple episodes of delivering information, I somewhat feel like the veterinary profession really have had been a true calling for me.

I've never been so excited to get into a case scenario, trying to build all stages of process for the patient's time line including:

History- Signs- Physical Examination - Ancillary Tests - Diagnostic Tools - Treatment - Follow Up.

Every stage requires skill and decent knowledge to direct the practitioner to the correct path in getting the disease proven with evidence and proceed to treatment. Unlike humans, our patients can't tell us what they are suffering from and we need to pay an extra care in digging more history as well as picking up signs or thorough physical examination.

And explaining the causes, the predisposition, the processes and effect to both clients and my colleagues seemed to be an enthralling experience for me too. I've yet to confirm whether if I'd actually enjoy teaching or just simply because I'd enjoy the process of knowing something someone else doesn't; but I know throughout the process when someone else nods and tells me

" It became so much easier when you said it Robinn!"

It becomes a higher drive for me to learn more and re-iterate them to people so they can pick things up easier.

On the other hand. working in medicine with direct hands on skills such as anesthesia usage, venipuncture, diagnostic tools handling like ultrasound or radiographs too fascinates me a lot. I would definitely wish to dwell in so much more clinical work so I get to be skilled over just theories in my head.

To date, I've decided to aim for the Japanese government scholarship again, and hopefully I do get a positive response by April 2017, then I will begin my journey to my next phase of PhD in October 2017, hopefully after my graduation.

On the other hand, I'll be heading for my first date through the app Alex insisted for me to use, let's call this person L. L is pretty enthusiastic from all the voice messages sent, hopefully it would be a good one.

Goodness, there goes my principle of not going into the dating game.