We are the four students who had a great opportunity to have a chance to study at Columbia University, College of Physician and surgeon for one month
The first two fifth year students from the faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, who attended in the Center for Comprehensive Care (CCC) at the Morningside clinic, St. Luke’s hospital for one month. This center teaches us how to manage and live with HIV patients by using holistic care. In this four weeks, we had learnt and experienced many things such as the new guideline for HIV drugs, how to approach the poor compliance patients, the alternative ways to treat the patients instead of the medical pills, how to deal with the infected maternity and infected HIV newborns and how to prevent the HIV infection among the high risk group. Even though we were not allowed to approach the patients by ourselves directly ,we had learnt a lot and gained a lot of benefit and the knowledge for our career in the future.
The CCC staffs are not only the doctors, but also the dentists, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, social workers, psychiatrists, and nutritionists and they had taken really good care of us. We felt to be a part of them. So we are really thankful to them all.
The other two students attended in Cardiac Care Unit (CCU) of St.Luke-Roosevelt Hospital which is the teaching hospital of Columbia University. We had very good cattle to study here because the cardiology training in Columbia university ranks top ten among the cardiology training centers in the United States. Dr.Eyal Herzog is the director of CCU. He was very kind to us and we had learnt many things from him during the conferences and CCU round. Our routine schedule in CCU started at 8.00 am of weekdays. We attended the cardiology conference with cardiology attendings, fellows and residents from 8 am to 9 am. Then, we had CCU round with Dr.Herzog and CCU team which included Dr.Silva, a cardiology fellow, internal medicine residents and interns. Before the bedside round, there was a new case conference which the residents and interns presented the new case admitted overnight and discussed with Dr.Herzog case by case. He also gave us some lecture about those cases such as the guideline to manage the patients with acute coronary syndrome, syncope and atrial fibrillation.
Dr.Herzog was very nice to the patients. He was very professional and had a good sense of humor at the same time, so we enjoyed making round with him everyday. As a medical student, we were assigned to pick up one case every week and followed them until they were discharged. We had to come early in the morning to do the progress note of the patients and present to Dr.Herzog during the bedside round too.
At noon, we enjoyed lunch in internal medicine conference everyday. There were many interesting conferences and we have learnt a lot from there.
In the afternoon, we had a chance to attend cardiology lecture and sometimes observing the cardiac catheterization and echocardiogram. We haven’t seen these procedures before. It was so interesting. Moreover, Dr.Silva will give us a lecture on the topic related to the patients in CCU and ECG interpretation every afternoon.
Time went so fast and we finally finished the elective clerkship in CCU. This program gave us lots of clinical knowledge and professional skills. We learnt continuously throughout the day and this gave us an inspiration to be a great doctor. Most of all, we had learnt American culture and improved our English skills.
We would like to thank you our dean , Dr.Niwes Nantachit , Dr.Siwaporn Chankrachang , Chiang Mai Medical School staffs : Dr.Lisa Mellman , Dr.Edgar Housepian and medical student affair staffs of Columbia University Medical School for giving us the opportunity to study at Columbia University Medical School.
We are greatly appreciated the accommodation and generosity from our CMU 06 alumni (Suandok) , Dr.Kosit Prieb , Consul general Piriya Khempon , PEE Kanchana Tangsuan and Dr.Somchai Kulwatdanaporn during our externship at Columbia University in New York City, Thank you again.
Passara Itsathitphaisarn
Napatsayod Swangtrakul
Patiphan Tanphiriyakun
Phuthasinee Pitpiboonwong
Chiang Mai Medical students