March 14, 2016
Reverse
Just a little fun thing. Today is March 14, which is White Day. White day is when the boys who got confessed to on Valentine's day return a gift to the girls. It was actually pretty cute to watch because people were rushing to the store in the basement to pick up some flowers and chocolates.
Also, I apologize for the lack of pictures. I'm having issues with posting them on weebly. If this continues, I might have to wait until I get back to America to post them.
Let's backtrack a little bit.
On Tuesday, I finished up my presentation and practiced diligently throughout the whole day. I was deathly nervous and the fact that I didn't know how the presentations would work made me even more nervous. Plus, it wasn't just Dr. Hong, but also her residents and other colleagues. Overall, it just wasn't good for my nerves,
Wednesday finally crept up on me and I continued to practice to the point where I had my whole presentation memorized. It was scary how much work I could do when I was nervous. Presentation time came and I actually third to present because the residents were having an introductory presentation. (I got to learn how to wash my hands before surgery and stuck it in a culture platter) Luckily, I was able to present sitting down with my back half turned to the audience. Afterwards, they started to talk in Korean about my presentation, so I was lost. But Dr. Hong was very happy about it and said that my basis of knowledge was actually pretty strong. (This made me really happy) She then told me that we would meet every day to discuss more of the data as well as possibly sending me off to Busan's trauma center (More about this in the bottom part). I was then led off to see the girl I was meant to talk to but she was asleep so it was
left for another day.
On Thursday, I didn't intend on going to morning rounds because I had something else planned for the morning. However, I saw them in the hallways and ended up going around with them. I was with them to see a couple of patients and then let go with plans to see Dr. Hong again at 7 p.m. I did more research during my break before promptly returning to her. She then started to talk a bit more about Korea's plans for trauma systems. In 2011, Korea's government planned to create 15 trauma centers by 2015 with plans of bringing the preventable trauma death rate from 35% to 20%. They succeeded in creating the trauma centers and plan to build all in all 17 by 2017. They're still trying to determine where they will place the other trauma centers, but they believe that it will either be in Jeju island or the eastern part of Korea. Now, why so many? Korea is 70% mountain, so it's very difficult to transfer patients. Actually, mortality rates go up because patients die while being transferred from hospital to hospital. So, a trauma center was designated per each district.
On Friday, I went to morning rounds at 7:30 a.m. Although it's difficult for me to fully understand what's going on, I still enjoy watching what they do. For me, medicine is an international language and watching how they do certain procedures is really interesting. (I also watched as they resuscitated a patient, which I thought was pretty awesome). Afterwards, she informed me that she would be giving a speech in the 19th Congress of the KSSMN and 2016 International Symposium and invited me to come. Of course, I said yes. It was a lecture made up of international surgeons that were discussing post operation nutrition intake. It was all in English, so I got to soak in all of the lectures. One that really interested me was by Dr. David Mercer from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. He had two topics to talk about, but what really interested me was the types of surgeries he discussed and showed. He went off to show us some intestine transplant surgeries as well as a type of surgery that basically stapled your intestines together to make it smaller. In all honesty, it was pretty awesome. (Oh! Another great thing that came out of the symposium was the food. They had run out of bento boxes so I was sent off to eat at a very fancy Korean restaurant. I was actually surprised because Korean food is known for the portion and the food I received looked like the clichéd fancy foods. But let me tell you, even though it looked small, I couldn't even finish everything. It was absolutely delicious)
Over the weekend, I went off to Gangnam and Myeongdong, which are two of the largest shopping districts. Needless to say, I shopped quite a bit. I'll talk about that more in a separate post I'll make for my past two weekends.
Onto business
I've been meeting with Dr. Hong to slowly go through AMC's data as well as to learn more about what goes on in the background, as I mentioned earlier.
She also has plans for me to go to Busan to visit one of the first trauma centers in Korea, Busan National University Hospital. The original data comes from there so she thinks that it will be a good opportunity for me.
The Technical Side of Things
I'm going to start explaining what trauma systems are and how they work. But, let's start off slow and go through some of the basics.
Dr. Joseph said that the idea of trauma systems for civilian use is actually very recent, about 40 years ago. It was after a doctor realized that no one knew what to do after a mass casualty accident that he pushed for a way to fix this. If we want to get into more specifics, trauma centers were set up and opened to the public back in 1966. Two were made in San Francisco and Chicago to test drive it.
After opening the trauma centers, they quickly found out that there was major improvement in the amount of deaths. It's found that, today, mortality rates by trauma have been cut down by a whopping 50% if there is a trauma system in place. (Please note that significant changes in data doesn't start to appear until 10-16 years of its implementation)
So, the million dollar question. What is a trauma system? The basic idea of the system is create a group of people that are organized and work together to heal trauma patients who come in with a wide range of symptoms/injuries. There are a lot of people who work in said group. They include trauma surgeons, emergency physicians, neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons, trauma nurses, technicians, etc. Each of these people have a specific job and a trauma center is required to have a certain amount. I'll go into further detail about what they do and how it's organized a while later.
One of the most important things when treating a trauma patient is triage. This allows the healthcare workers to determine what the patient needs and send them off to the proper level of trauma care. I will also go into further detail about this a while later.
I feel like I just continued to say again and again I will explain this later, but I promise I will. I just don't want to make my posts too long.
For Fun
It's weird to say, but Korean people definitely have a different feel to them compared to American people. I don't like one more than the other, but it's definitely a different feeling. One of the biggest things that I noticed, and I think everybody says this, is that Korean people like to dress....hmm....more conservative? It just seems like they care more about what they're wearing as well as what other people are wearing. (As Tia describes it, people in America seem to dress more freely and relaxed) Also, there are many that I see that are very fashion forward and definitely shows off their personality. I like the way they dress back home too, but again, it's much more casual. (Hahaha...I'm going to assume that this makes sense...)
However, there is one thing that gets to me though. In America, people willingly hold doors for the people directly behind them or say please and thank you when that happens. I think that only happened to me once but it was because I held the door for him first. It takes a while for me to get used to the fact that this isn't considered rude here. But overall, they're very nice here and love to take care of you. It's a somewhat familiar feeling as they treat you like family and make sure you eat a lot.
Interesting Fact of the Day
In Myeongdong, a larger percentage of Chinese and Japanese than Korean actually occupy the area. This is strange as Korea is known for having a very homogenous population.
*Fact obtained from Tia
Other Sources:
http://www.aci.health.nsw.gov.au/get-involved/institute-of-trauma-and-injury-management/clinical/trauma_system/monitoring_of_the_nsw_trauma_system
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/knowledge/postimpact/trauma_
care/are_trauma_services_effective_en.htm
Reverse
Just a little fun thing. Today is March 14, which is White Day. White day is when the boys who got confessed to on Valentine's day return a gift to the girls. It was actually pretty cute to watch because people were rushing to the store in the basement to pick up some flowers and chocolates.
Also, I apologize for the lack of pictures. I'm having issues with posting them on weebly. If this continues, I might have to wait until I get back to America to post them.
Let's backtrack a little bit.
On Tuesday, I finished up my presentation and practiced diligently throughout the whole day. I was deathly nervous and the fact that I didn't know how the presentations would work made me even more nervous. Plus, it wasn't just Dr. Hong, but also her residents and other colleagues. Overall, it just wasn't good for my nerves,
Wednesday finally crept up on me and I continued to practice to the point where I had my whole presentation memorized. It was scary how much work I could do when I was nervous. Presentation time came and I actually third to present because the residents were having an introductory presentation. (I got to learn how to wash my hands before surgery and stuck it in a culture platter) Luckily, I was able to present sitting down with my back half turned to the audience. Afterwards, they started to talk in Korean about my presentation, so I was lost. But Dr. Hong was very happy about it and said that my basis of knowledge was actually pretty strong. (This made me really happy) She then told me that we would meet every day to discuss more of the data as well as possibly sending me off to Busan's trauma center (More about this in the bottom part). I was then led off to see the girl I was meant to talk to but she was asleep so it was
left for another day.
On Thursday, I didn't intend on going to morning rounds because I had something else planned for the morning. However, I saw them in the hallways and ended up going around with them. I was with them to see a couple of patients and then let go with plans to see Dr. Hong again at 7 p.m. I did more research during my break before promptly returning to her. She then started to talk a bit more about Korea's plans for trauma systems. In 2011, Korea's government planned to create 15 trauma centers by 2015 with plans of bringing the preventable trauma death rate from 35% to 20%. They succeeded in creating the trauma centers and plan to build all in all 17 by 2017. They're still trying to determine where they will place the other trauma centers, but they believe that it will either be in Jeju island or the eastern part of Korea. Now, why so many? Korea is 70% mountain, so it's very difficult to transfer patients. Actually, mortality rates go up because patients die while being transferred from hospital to hospital. So, a trauma center was designated per each district.
On Friday, I went to morning rounds at 7:30 a.m. Although it's difficult for me to fully understand what's going on, I still enjoy watching what they do. For me, medicine is an international language and watching how they do certain procedures is really interesting. (I also watched as they resuscitated a patient, which I thought was pretty awesome). Afterwards, she informed me that she would be giving a speech in the 19th Congress of the KSSMN and 2016 International Symposium and invited me to come. Of course, I said yes. It was a lecture made up of international surgeons that were discussing post operation nutrition intake. It was all in English, so I got to soak in all of the lectures. One that really interested me was by Dr. David Mercer from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. He had two topics to talk about, but what really interested me was the types of surgeries he discussed and showed. He went off to show us some intestine transplant surgeries as well as a type of surgery that basically stapled your intestines together to make it smaller. In all honesty, it was pretty awesome. (Oh! Another great thing that came out of the symposium was the food. They had run out of bento boxes so I was sent off to eat at a very fancy Korean restaurant. I was actually surprised because Korean food is known for the portion and the food I received looked like the clichéd fancy foods. But let me tell you, even though it looked small, I couldn't even finish everything. It was absolutely delicious)
Over the weekend, I went off to Gangnam and Myeongdong, which are two of the largest shopping districts. Needless to say, I shopped quite a bit. I'll talk about that more in a separate post I'll make for my past two weekends.
Onto business
I've been meeting with Dr. Hong to slowly go through AMC's data as well as to learn more about what goes on in the background, as I mentioned earlier.
She also has plans for me to go to Busan to visit one of the first trauma centers in Korea, Busan National University Hospital. The original data comes from there so she thinks that it will be a good opportunity for me.
The Technical Side of Things
I'm going to start explaining what trauma systems are and how they work. But, let's start off slow and go through some of the basics.
Dr. Joseph said that the idea of trauma systems for civilian use is actually very recent, about 40 years ago. It was after a doctor realized that no one knew what to do after a mass casualty accident that he pushed for a way to fix this. If we want to get into more specifics, trauma centers were set up and opened to the public back in 1966. Two were made in San Francisco and Chicago to test drive it.
After opening the trauma centers, they quickly found out that there was major improvement in the amount of deaths. It's found that, today, mortality rates by trauma have been cut down by a whopping 50% if there is a trauma system in place. (Please note that significant changes in data doesn't start to appear until 10-16 years of its implementation)
So, the million dollar question. What is a trauma system? The basic idea of the system is create a group of people that are organized and work together to heal trauma patients who come in with a wide range of symptoms/injuries. There are a lot of people who work in said group. They include trauma surgeons, emergency physicians, neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons, trauma nurses, technicians, etc. Each of these people have a specific job and a trauma center is required to have a certain amount. I'll go into further detail about what they do and how it's organized a while later.
One of the most important things when treating a trauma patient is triage. This allows the healthcare workers to determine what the patient needs and send them off to the proper level of trauma care. I will also go into further detail about this a while later.
I feel like I just continued to say again and again I will explain this later, but I promise I will. I just don't want to make my posts too long.
For Fun
It's weird to say, but Korean people definitely have a different feel to them compared to American people. I don't like one more than the other, but it's definitely a different feeling. One of the biggest things that I noticed, and I think everybody says this, is that Korean people like to dress....hmm....more conservative? It just seems like they care more about what they're wearing as well as what other people are wearing. (As Tia describes it, people in America seem to dress more freely and relaxed) Also, there are many that I see that are very fashion forward and definitely shows off their personality. I like the way they dress back home too, but again, it's much more casual. (Hahaha...I'm going to assume that this makes sense...)
However, there is one thing that gets to me though. In America, people willingly hold doors for the people directly behind them or say please and thank you when that happens. I think that only happened to me once but it was because I held the door for him first. It takes a while for me to get used to the fact that this isn't considered rude here. But overall, they're very nice here and love to take care of you. It's a somewhat familiar feeling as they treat you like family and make sure you eat a lot.
Interesting Fact of the Day
In Myeongdong, a larger percentage of Chinese and Japanese than Korean actually occupy the area. This is strange as Korea is known for having a very homogenous population.
*Fact obtained from Tia
Other Sources:
http://www.aci.health.nsw.gov.au/get-involved/institute-of-trauma-and-injury-management/clinical/trauma_system/monitoring_of_the_nsw_trauma_system
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/knowledge/postimpact/trauma_
care/are_trauma_services_effective_en.htm