Thursday, November 24, 2005

Hey Dr G! /

Met up with one of the profs in my dept today. My first impression of him last wk was like..hey he's so cheerful. And he certainly is. We went for fieldwork today at Temasek Country Club. No, not to play golf. To do medical checkups for workers from SG Pest Assoc, and collect some blood samples at the same time. I noticed from start to end that the smile on Dr G's face was always there. He greeted the workers with a big grin, taking time to note their names and asking them how they were feeling (sincerely, that is). Then even tho his job was just to check BP and height n weight, he bothered to look thru' the questionnaire I administered to see if everything was in order and whether there was anything he should look into during the exam. I was totally impressed by the way he handled it. Even as he brought the workers to the weighing scale, he was like, "If you don't mind, pls take off ur shoes...yes that's it..." and kept giving comments like "wow so u're a tall and thin guy." "good u're fit". What a refreshing change from docs n nurses who go "HEIGHT! WEIGHT!"

I was commenting to Viv on how there was always a big grin on his face whenever he walked pass us. Later on when we were hanging around she told him that (much to my embarrassment) but he replied with a wonderful phrase, "Hey, there's many things in life to be happy about!" (and he added that he's extra happy these days cos he's a new dad...awwww...) Gosh! If only more ppl thought like that (myself included). It's so true, we tend to think of negatives - I have to work OT today, my headache is killing me. But we don't stop to think - hey at least I have a good job, my headache will get better soon.

As if I wasn't impressed enough, towards the end of the day when we had nothing much to do, one of the interns asked him a medical qs (diff b'w nasal congestion and sinuses). Any other doctor would probably have given a one sentence reply..a few lines at the most. He paused to think for a minute, and sat with us for 15 mins explaining us the differences and misconceptions. Awesome! He even went on to ask us why we asked, whether we had it, what our doc was treating us with. Oh if only my GP were as nice as him. He was quite amazed that I worked with one of the developers of some asthma machine (one of my profs in KI)- apparently he can't wait to get his hands on one set himself (there's only one such machine in SG, in NUH). We were talking abt the theory behing the machine and he was in total agreement with me (or rather with tthe Swedish prof) and he sensed my interest till he almost offered me to join in their study. Haha. We'll see :P Unfortunately it was time to get back to lab. Hope I have a good chat with him again soon!

No comments: