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A young doctor’s note to self: Information is imperfect. Live with it.
We either know too little about certain conditions or can’t sift through the deluge of information. Let’s embrace these limitations.
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Despite decades of cutting-edge research and development, medicine as a practice remains riddled with uncertainty, says the writer.
PHOTO: UNSPLASH
Faye Ng Yu Ci
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We’ve finally arrived at the time of the year that all of us have been gearing up for, our heads buried in books: the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) examinations.
The MBBS is the graduation exam for local undergraduate medical schools, the qualifying milestone that gives medical trainees the green light to provisionally practise medicine. It serves as the culmination of five years of medical education, consisting of both written papers for theory and viva-voce (oratorial) stations assessing clinical skills. Most students approach the MBBS with a mixture of resigned humour and inspired fear, trading medical memes and pats on the back to make light of the month-long gruelling exams. The amount of content to study can be overwhelming and the variety of clinical cases daunting.
