Source: www.usnews.com
I usually get a lot of questions from my relatives and my friends every time I came back for my holidays from India.
“Do they really provide a lot of cadavers there?”
“There are a lot of diseases in India right?”
“What language do you speak there?”
And the most painful question is; “Can you get any Malaysian food there?”
As of 2011, there has been an estimated of 2000 Malaysian students in India, studying in various colleges and universities mainly medicine, from different places like Bangalore, Mangalore, Manipal, Mysore, Karadh, Belgaum and many more.
Back to the popular question asked. “How is India different to study medicine?”
Like every other medical school in the world, we basically learn the same syllabus of medicine. What differs mainly is the experience itself. So, I’m going to share a little bit on my experience studying in India as per now. I’m entering my 4th year so basically I’ve been here for almost 3 years.
Q: “Do they really provide a lot of cadavers?”
A: My answer would be yes and no. During my first year, we have one dissection class per week. We are given a cadaver for each group of 10. The ratio simply put is 1:10. There is a pool of cadaver beside the dissection hall but we are only allowed to use the one that have been freshly dissected by our teachers prior to class. This is to make sure our unskilled hands won’t harm the remaining parts of cadaver which have not been beautifully dissected by the teachers. So yes, there are a lot of cadavers. But no, we do not get to use all of it as we wish. However, we do have the freshly dissected parts in the anatomical museum located next to the dissection hall where we can freely access the parts of the cadaver anytime we want. Here, opportunity is an open box, yet you need to be diligent enough to push yourself.
Q: “There are a lot of diseases in India right?”
A: According to my observation in the hospitals, yes we have a lot of patients with different kind of diseases. Well, I only observed the campuses’ hospitals so I am not in the position to generalize. But India is densely populated and to be frank hygiene is not quite popular among the people here. A lot of patients in India come from low-income family which normally could not afford expensive hospital treatment. Some of them, could not even afford the money for transportation back and forth to the hospital. Looking at the history of the patients, I was shocked to see how some patient can withstand their painful ulcers or trauma for weeks to even months! I met a farmer who had a thorn stuck in his foot for days but he left the wound unclean and walked barefooted for days working in the farm. By the time he went to the hospital, they had to amputate his leg as it was severely necrosed.
India also has a myriad of unknown culture and custom undiscovered by us students. At the hospitals, the nurses told us that it was still a popular practise in certain rural areas to put cow dung on a new-born baby leading to a high case of infection and septicaemia in post-natal babies. A lot of people in the rural area are still barefooted and they do not have access to clean toilets. Open defecation is still a major practise, even in big cities like Bangalore and Mumbai. These are the common causes for cases like Typhoid fever, hookworm infestations, cholera and gastroenteritis.
The Indian diet is also high in fat and sugar. Anyone who has ever tasted a sweet named ‘gulab jamun’ would know. This sweet tasted like a pack of sugar rolled into a ball and coated with layers of more sugar. Indians also prefer rice with ghee which is loaded with fats. As per where I live, there are not many smokers around, yet most people have a habit of chewing tobacco leading potentially to oral cancer and laryngeal cancer.
Q: “What language do you speak there?”
A: I live in Karnataka where most of the people speaks Kannada. There are hundred different kind of languages spoken by Indians across the country. The difficult part in our hospital is that the patient speaks 3 different languages which are Kannada, Hindi and Marathi. And it is a totally different language from each other, in both reading and writing. Some patients only speak Marathi, some only speak Kannada. My friends and I had a lot of experience being laughed at by the patients as our pronunciations are quite inaccurate and cannot be understood. But it is challenge we students must take in mastering the art of history taking.
Q: “Are there any Malaysian food there?”
A: For overseas students, this is quite an awkward question. We’re supposed to live in a country and adapt to the different delicacies and foods in the country we are studying in. But as many of us know, food craving can add to the terrible home-sickness of being far off from family. I have not yet found any cure for these food cravings in Belgaum – the city I live in, but I believe for cities like Manipal and Bangalore this is not an issue. In fact in Manipal, nasi lemak and roti canai are sold in their campus café. All in all, it is not that important, what is important is that we are here to study medicine. Everything else needs further adaptation.
Some would ask the kind of system we are using. This varies according to the universities. Some universities still practise the traditional system, some have moved on to the integrated “Problem Based Learning” system. Resources are plenty with cheap books to buy. Medical books are very cheap and there are also Indian authors’ textbooks available. Here we can find a simplified version of Guyton, Ganong, Robins ( read: medical textbooks) for a much cheaper price. What’s important is to pick and choose the resources wisely and start using these chances to gain as much knowledge as possible.
In the end, it all comes back to the student’s effort as an individual and together as a group. There is no use having a lot of patients in the hospitals if you do not go to the hospital. It is useless to have nice museums if it is only visited during orientation week. There is no use having a lot of resources but still neglecting them. Diligence is what makes a student, a great student; an attitude corrected from the beginning will survive till the end. So, how about the country you are studying in? How is it different?
Maryam Zakiah is one of The Malaysian Medical Gazette’s Young Columnists. Find out more about her at our Team page.