I was invited to attend the 30th year reunion of the medical class of 1988-93 Universiti Malaya on Malaysia Day.
I was 40 years old when I taught this medical class.
There were exuberant shouts of greetings as friends who had not seen one another for years, met. Some had travelled from as far as Australia to attend.
The six of us senior lecturers present were also welcomed warmly.
Besides the camaraderie, this was a time when our thoughts travelled to the past to relive a time when we were young, to recall the challenges we faced and surmounted to be what we are today.
Many in the class, after graduating, went to do further training in various specialities. So the class had in their midst specialists in every field of Medicine, including anaesthesiologists, cardiologists, family medicine specialists, paediatricians and surgeons from several disciplines. In addition, some were professors and lecturers in medical schools, two were hospital directors including one who was the Director of the Universiti Malaya Medical Centre. Three were directors and heads of departments at the Health Ministry and one was a hepatobiliary liver transplant surgeon and Head of Service, also at the Health Ministry. Another, an ENT Professor at the Universiti Malaya had authored a book about base of skull surgery. So the class has done brilliantly.
We, the teachers, felt a lot of pride in the achievements of our former students and were grateful that we were provided an opportunity to play a small role at the beginning of their journeys into the world of Medicine.
The doctors present where multi-talented. The evening opened with a dynamic Malay love song Demi Cinta Ni... Ye... rendered with gusto by Dr Chua Kok Boon, an anaesthetist. Chua’s singing got the audience swaying and tapping their feet.
Soon after Dr Loo Cheen Yeng, an opthalmologist who runs her own eye hospital and is an award-winning dancer, joined Dr Chua on the stage and accompanied his singing with her gentle dance moves.
Dr Loo also performed another beautiful dance to the song Sway, sung by their classmate Dr Nurashikin Ibrahim, Head of the National Centre of Excellence for Mental Health at the Health Ministry. Nurashikin is also a part-time professional singer and was the emcee that evening.
Dr Chua then sang another lovely song, Si Jantung Hati+Madu Dan Racun.
That night, a closely guarded secret – protected for three decades by the strong camaraderie among classmates – was finally unveiled.
Medical students can be mischievous. In their final year of medical school, students are given clinicopathological cases (CPCs) to solve, where they analyse clinical history, symptoms, and investigation results to create a list of possible diagnoses for the patient.
In 1993, I supervised a CPC session. Students were given instructions to hand me a slip of paper with their name and their diagnosis, a few days before the class. Though most had written serious answers, some had been cheeky and handed in ridiculous answers. The most creative of these were, “Acute Renal Failure, secondary to anxiety from upcoming exams” and “I cannot think of an answer”, with the contributor signing his name fictitiously as “Charlie Chinnakutty”.
During the reunion, students recalled that I strode into the lecture hall livid with anger, and ordered that the doors leading out of the hall to be locked to prevent the escape of the culprit, as I tried unsuccessfully to find Charlie Chinnakutty.
“Charlie” was safely ensconced with his mischievous friends in the lecture hall’s centre, as I typically called on diligent front-row students or back-row slackers to answer questions.
It was said that I had offered a bottle of brandy as an inducement for Charlie’s identity to be revealed. It was to remain a class secret until the recent reunion when Dr K. Sivananthan, now a respected orthopaedic consultant, stepped out to the front of the audience, related the tale of Charlie Chinnakutty and confessed that he was the perpetrator – to uproarious laughter from the audience.
In my speech, I took the opportunity to remind my former students that we were all privileged and blessed to have become doctors. I quoted Professor Danaraj, the Foundation Dean of our medical school, who said, “Medicine, to which we are devoted, is a special calling and a privilege granted to us by society. It is a glorious opportunity to enjoy work that is forever intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying, while providing social status and reasonable financial rewards.”
I pointed out the remarkable strides Medicine had made to improve the health of humans and reminded the audience how appreciative and thrilled we all had to be as custodians and dispensers of this life-preserving science. Amid the demanding and often exhausting work of being a doctor, it’s crucial not to lose sight of the joy in our profession.
Medicine had made progress even before our own eyes. When I was a young doctor and a patient came in with a heart attack, I watched helplessly as no treatment was then available to prevent heart muscle damage. Advances in Medicine over the last 30 years changed all that and now we can emergently open up the occluded artery and save the heart in patients who come to hospital early during a heart attack. Similarly, in patients who suffer a stroke, doctors can administer clot-busting medications or devices to unblock arteries and prevent brain damage. To illustrate, I shared the story of a 98-year-old patient who gained seven more years of life, thanks to these advancements.
There were similar paradigm shifts in management in every field of Medicine, resulting in faster and more complete patient recovery. I told the audience to find joy in the privilege of healing. I also reminded all that we should not abuse the privilege accorded to us but to use the power given us to change lives wisely, with gratitude and honesty, and not betray the trust our patients have placed in us. It’s important to acknowledge that the progress in medicine has come at a cost, with healthcare often becoming more expensive and, in some areas, more profit-driven than service-oriented.
I quoted Professor Danaraj again who repeatedly taught us that Medicine was a lifelong course and that we needed to regularly keep updating ourselves to remain in the forefront of medical advances to best serve our patients.
I also requested all present to use their accumulated experience to participate in the teaching of the next generation of doctors so that the tradition of providing excellent medical care endures long after we are gone.
In closing, I reminded all that Medicine was both a Science and an Art and that our legacy transcended the surgeries we performed and the diagnoses we made but resided in the lives we touched with kindness, compassion and honesty.
The medical class would like to record their appreciation to the organising committee: Azlan Zainal, Nazirah Hasnan, Nurashikin Ibrahim, Lee Kam Pong and Beh Siu Joo.
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