Chapter 10 : Assets of a good Medical Student ( 5 )

iii. Important skills

There are additional skills apart from medical skills. As medicine is about human management, therefore communication skills are essential.

1. Communication skills

Verbal : in the clinical years, students have to present their cases in both long and short cases. A student with a good command of language and ability to speak will definitely impress the examiner and is more likely to get better marks.

Writing : this is a skill that is important as medical students and as doctors later because one has to write well for case write-up and theory examinations. Once qualified, doctors have to be able to write well on cases or research as part of their publication.

2. Intra-personal

Knowing self-limitation : a wise person is one who knows his or her limitations. As a student learning to be a doctor, some maturity is required to identify one’s limitation and the steps to take to overcome it. After becoming a doctor, it is important for one to know one’s limits and know when to ask for help or refer cases to the specialist in that field.

Interpersonal skill is important as you have to make sure that your relationship with patients, colleagues and subordinates is a healthy one and you do not offend anybody in your daily interactions.

To be effective students, time management and study skills are mandatory :

a. Study skills

b. Managerial skills

- Time management

- Human management : this is important as medicine involves dealing with people all the time. How do you get a patient to co-operate with you during the exam and clinical work?

c. Financial management : this is a very crucial skill to be acquired as medical students usually have limited financial resources.

As lecturers teach medical students, they are not just serving one person. For every doctor that they train they are actually giving service to seven thousand Malaysians (the doctor to Malaysian population ration. This mindset provides many lecturers with the dedication to stay on in the government service and teach to ensure that the medical students acquire adequate knowledge to be safe doctors. Similarly training an ophthalmologist is not about training one ophthalmologist, but it is about serving ninety thousand Malaysians which is represented by, an ophthalmologist in Malaysia.

(How to become a good & successful medical student; Muhaya Hj Mohamad)