My Draft portfolio for keep sake

Effective communication with patients, team members, colleagues and the community

The first major hurdle of communication was the oral presentation. I chose the topic that was most foreign to me and it was anatomical pathology. This serves as an opportunity for me to do a formal research on this discipline. As i am required to present on various aspects of discipline, I felt the need to be very clear and knowledgeable on the topic. The first mistake I made was that I did not do a proper rehearsal for the presentation even though I jotted down points pertaining to the slides. This resulted in me stumbling at the first part of the presentation as I struggle to cope with my mind blanking out. However, as I spoke through the first slide, I slowly regained my confidence to wrap it up with a decent level of appraisal. A particular weakness of my presentation is that my images were inadequate in bringing out the effect of simplicity and meaning at the same time. My peers commented that the images were “insufficient” in explaining what anatomical pathologists do.

Personally, I feel that oral presentation is a confidence game and there are two main factors that most affected my confidence level. The first is having the most knowledge about the topic presented in the room. It certainly helped as I was able to relate to the audience and able to deliver information across continuously. The second is the response of the audience, specifically at instances where they started giggling when I injected some humour into my content. It gave me a sense of control and confidence in the presentation. This ungraded exercise is extremely useful as I do not have the fear of being marked down officially, meaning I could go out there, be myself, liberally make mistakes and learn from them. For subsequent presentations, my aim is to explore the use of images purposefully without compromising on content. This can be achieved by having a friend to critique my work before the actual presentation.


The next significant event involving communication is the process of completing my individual assignment on “Heroes of medical science”. It is a challenging process to try to translate medical knowledge into a simple form of language understood by the layman. I had to use minimal medical knowledge in my explanations to keep it simple yet fulfil the criteria of my assignment, which is to write about a particular field of medical science. To solve this problem, I allowed my peers from other faculties to read my draft assignment and they told me I needed to include definitions for certain terms in my assignment which will enhance their understanding of the report. Part of the medical school curriculum is to train us to be competent academic writers and I felt that my words carried more weight when I did my citations in a professional manner: APA referencing style. By citing my work properly, it provided evidence which improved the credibility of my work and avoid the cardinal sin of writing that is plagiarism. I aim to achieve better continuities between paragraphs in the assignments ahead by ensuring that the concluding sentence and topic sentence between paragraphs link sufficiently well.

Self‐directed learning and critical evaluation skills

The learning style in university is vastly different from that of high school. I came from an education system that “spoon fed” students with a lot of information. As a result, we had very detailed lecture notes – the important parts were bolded, information was clearly organised in tables, bullet forms, acronyms, mnemonics, and examination requirements were answered systematically. We were also taught beyond the syllabus and hence, lecture notes were capable of handling any surprises from examinations. This allowed me to have a very strong foundation in my basic sciences. It was enriching but I felt like a drone, in the way that I download information from my lecture notes mindlessly and upload them on the examination script. For lectures in the medicine program, I was taken aback when I first saw the lecture notes – they were exactly the same as the Powerpoint slides shown! The content was also relatively disorganised with the lecturers spraying random bits of information about the lecture topic. From that moment, I knew my method of learning had to change.

My learning has since expanded beyond the borders of the lecture notes. The academic lectures left me riddled with questions and set me in panic. Fortunately, I learnt to manage this by referring to a copy of the “Oxford Medical Dictionary” whenever I encounter jargons that I cannot comprehend. Another useful resource is the glossary of words used in pathology that was provided to us at the very first pathology lecture. I noticed the terms used in medicine are intricately linked to Greek and Latin - both languages are used in tandem to form majority of the terms. Using this relationship, I found online resources that allowed me to appreciate the meaning of terms like “brachiocephalic” which means a blood vessel related to the head and arm as “brachium” means “arm” in Latin while “kephale” means “head” in Greek. I feel that it is a good method of learning to start with definitions and meaning before proceeding to understand cause-effect flow charts. These external resources provided me with the understanding to make sense of what is being taught.

Evaluation and analysis seemed like a daunting task but the difficulty is mediated by the aid of appropriate resources. I am expected to demonstrate critical thinking not only in terms of evaluating actual content in my assignment but also the credibility of my references. By using resources such as Scopus and Web of Science, I am able to find peer reviewed journals that offer a substantial amount of credibility. They also provide me with links to other articles that cited my particular article I chosen. It saved me a lot of time trying to find different articles that reinforce the same point I was trying to make. Although such resources simplified the meaning of evaluation and analysis, I still feel the need to work on these capabilities. It is even more important for subsequent assignments as they form the bulk of the requirements.