My ambition
Ever since I was very young and saw perhaps a child cut and bleeding or an old woman suffering from an incurable disease, I have always hated pain and the human suffering that it causes. It has, therefore, always been my ambition to become a doctor and to be able to cure diseases and to ease pain. Many count riches, power and glory among their ambitions, but for me, to serve humanity through medicine is the highest ambition of all.
The training is long and expensive and I shall need to work very hard. After passing the right examinations in school. I shall then need to take a University examination, which will enable me to enter the medical school, which is part of our University life in Singapore.
At University, there will be many lectures to attend. Physiology and Anatomy are two of the most important subjects during the first year. The different organs of the body such as the heart, the kidneys and the liver, together with their functions and disorders have to be studied. As well as this, there will be lectures on the many different diseases to which man is subject, with the various ways of diagnosing them and dealing with them. Lectures are given by highly qualified specialists.
As well as this theoretical work, there will be a practical course during the five years training. A new medical student has to begin by ‘walking the wards’ in a hospital. He accompanies doctors in charge of patients and watches what they do. He has to study patients being examined and listen tot he conclusions reached. He has intricate operations being performed by skilled surgeons. He had to make his own reports from his own diagnoses, at the same time, as the qualified doctor. All of these are checked and corrected, so that the student can learn from his mistakes. When he has passed this practical course, which lasts for about four years, he is then called a ‘House man’.
Written examinations are taken at different stages. At the end of the first year, there is the first M.B. This is the first part of a Bachelor of Medicine degree and is a very difficult hurdle. Many students fail it. Then, there is the second M.B. and at the end ‘finals’ which include both a written, and oral and a practical examination. When ‘finals’ are safely behind me, I will really by a qualified doctor and be able to add this style to my name.
It will then be my ambition to obtain a grant from the authorities to travel abroad for further studies and I would like to go to Australia to do this. At a post-graduate course there, I would be able to study different methods, to see new techniques and to obtain even higher qualifications like a Doctor of Medicine degree.
Finally, I would return to Malaysia where I want to work as an assistant medical officer in one of our busiest cities. There, I would gain more practical experience than I ever could in a small village. All types of illness would, among a large population, most certainly come my way. The ailments of children, of young mothers and of the very old could all be studied. I would learn to recognize an appendicitis of tonsillitis very quickly. In a very large city, it is not always possible to have the services of a gynaecologist and so I would have practice in delivering babies myself.
During this time, I would try to save money. Doctors are rightly well-paid and I would live moderately. After some years, therefore, I hope to be not only experienced as a general practitioner, but also comfortably rich as well.
Finally, then I would realize my ultimate ambition, which is to do the medical practice in my own village and to return here. I have never had any desire to specialize and to become a pathologist, a surgeon, a gynecologist or an ear, nose and throat specialist. To be a good general practitioner here, in my own home is the end of my dream and, although not a specialist in any particular sphere, I shall know enough to deal with the common ailments of life and to call in the right specialists a once if they are needed. I shall then be able to serve the village I love so well.
