AMSA Panacea 2023
The annual AMSA creative publication for 2023 is now published! In this edition, we have insightful articles from talented writers and photographers.
The annual AMSA creative publication for 2023 is now published! In this edition, we have insightful articles from talented writers and photographers.
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PANACEA:<br />
REFLECTION<br />
<strong>AMSA</strong> <strong>2023</strong>
CONTENTS<br />
p a n a c e a<br />
Acknowledgments .............................................................4<br />
Graduation Lament by Henry Kocatekin......................5<br />
Have Faith by Henry Kocatekin.......................................6<br />
<strong>Panacea</strong> - Reflections by Sonya Yegorova-Lee.........9<br />
Yingina by Elizabeth Hu.....................................................12<br />
Lake Burrumbeet by Elizabeth Hu..................................13<br />
Guide to Specialties...........................................................14<br />
<strong>AMSA</strong> Rural Health: Frontier..............................................17
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS<br />
p a n a c e a<br />
The <strong>2023</strong> <strong>AMSA</strong> <strong>Panacea</strong> publication theme is:<br />
REFLECTION<br />
Publication and Design Officer: Shani Nguyen<br />
Publications subcommittee: Sonya Yegorova-Lee<br />
(editor), Liam Spence (editor), Sophia Dang (graphic<br />
designer)<br />
“We do not learn from experience. We learn from<br />
reflecting on experience"<br />
~John Dewey
G R A D U A T I O N<br />
LAMENT<br />
BY HENRY KOCATEKIN<br />
I recently learned about elegies: “it is often a melancholy poem that<br />
laments its subject's death but ends in consolation.” Nearing<br />
graduation, I realise that I’m far more qualified to be a medical<br />
student than I am to be a doctor.<br />
I feel desperately empty for the hole that I leave behind<br />
Like a shadow that I’ve betrayed by stepping out of the light<br />
It is not gone, merely invisible to the eye, seen only in my mind<br />
In my memory, slipping, pulling away, despite me holding on so tight.<br />
I hear the cheers and delight around but feel fraudulent on admission<br />
It’s a candle I light to mourn a time I once enjoyed<br />
A home not defined by place, but a shared expedition<br />
And now I’m at the end of the line, facing an idea with which I’ve never<br />
toyed.<br />
That family, that home, they’re slipping away<br />
Like a ship beyond the horizon line, or a child who doesn’t look back<br />
I feel pride, and despair, and guilt about feeling betrayed<br />
I want this candle to stop burning, to cool and lock us in our tracks.<br />
I can’t bear the future for which I feel so wholly unprepared<br />
I am becoming he who I have be trained to treat<br />
Sick and broken as a gaze into the abyss, I am beyond repair<br />
So I step but I do not fall, for the memories form a path beneath my<br />
feet.
HAVE<br />
FAITH<br />
KOCATEKIN<br />
BY HENRY<br />
Blood doesn’t spray like I expected.<br />
My heart doesn’t race.<br />
There’s no adrenaline.<br />
Just confusion.<br />
And questions.<br />
Endless questions.<br />
They all sit between me and the Registrar.<br />
Between me and my future.<br />
How long will the incision be?<br />
How long will I be standing here?<br />
How many years will I be standing on this side of the patient?<br />
When will I be where he is?<br />
What steps do I need to take?<br />
What does the path look like?<br />
Two steps.<br />
At most.<br />
Two steps?<br />
Surely not.<br />
Despite only being on the other side of the patient, it feels<br />
unreachable.<br />
And then the nurse moves in.<br />
She shifts her bench so it’s at the head of the bed.<br />
Now I’m trapped.<br />
There’s no way for me to make those two steps.<br />
I look behind me.<br />
Cords and tubes dangle.<br />
Like a matted web.<br />
Or a cell.
I’m never leaving.<br />
I’m never holding the scalpel.<br />
I look back at the patient and the room spins slowly.<br />
My head feels simultaneously empty and full.<br />
Empty of knowledge.<br />
Full of questions I can’t quite articulate.<br />
Like fog, they make the path ahead unclear.<br />
And then a retractor penetrates the fog.<br />
Effortlessly.<br />
Without a quiver from the hand that places it in my own.<br />
Mine shakes with doubt.<br />
With fear.<br />
With uncertainty of whether I am pulling too firmly.<br />
Or perhaps not firmly enough.<br />
I wonder if he, whose hands grace the patient’s neck, was<br />
taught the confidence he exudes.<br />
It seems so natural, so innate.<br />
There is calmness in his artisanal skills.<br />
Like watching a sculptor on a miniature figurine.<br />
Whilst the slightest cut could be devastating, still he continues<br />
with clear, deliberate strokes.<br />
Like a master.<br />
Like he who has not only read all the books, but written them<br />
too.<br />
No one has taught me.<br />
No one has taught me how to hold the tool, which angle to<br />
pull, or where to rest my idle hand.<br />
Just next to me?<br />
On the patient’s face?<br />
That feels wrong.<br />
I know she’s asleep and she can’t feel anything, but it still feels<br />
wrong.<br />
And I can’t put it by my side.<br />
The nurse already evicted me for my lack of sterility.<br />
So, I let it hover.<br />
In mid-air.<br />
In limbo, between the world I think I want to join and the one<br />
of comfort.
Between his world and mine.<br />
The tension radiates through my forearm.<br />
Aching, but imperceptible.<br />
I hide my winces behind the mask.<br />
Alongside my other questions.<br />
I’m not thinking about the patient.<br />
I don’t even know her name.<br />
All I’m thinking about is me.<br />
And how painful my legs are.<br />
And how I desperately want to move.<br />
How my insignificance is killing me.<br />
How this career feels like a black tunnel that I haven’t even<br />
entered and somehow, I’m still surrounded by darkness.<br />
How I want a recipe to follow.<br />
I want assurance that there’ll be an end.<br />
That I’ll make it to the other side of the table.<br />
The side where you operate on people, not anatomical<br />
landmarks.<br />
The side where your questions pertain to how you can improve<br />
the quality of life of another human.<br />
Of someone who has gifted you with a blessing, laying himself<br />
bare.<br />
The side where you hide your fears to give your patients<br />
confidence.<br />
That world feels so impossibly far from the one that I exist in.<br />
Too far away.<br />
Retractor.<br />
Through my fog, appears a second as steady as before.<br />
Suddenly my right hand has a function.<br />
And I’m lifting.<br />
And this tension is right, because his blade passes just a little<br />
bit more effortlessly than before.<br />
And I realise that the tunnel is still dark.<br />
No one is shining a light or making promises.<br />
But my eyes are adjusting<br />
And there’s another stepping stone.<br />
It’s the stepping stone from one retractor to two.<br />
It doesn’t look like much, but it’s the next step I’m going to<br />
take.
P A N A C E A<br />
REFLECTIONS<br />
SNOITCELFER<br />
BY SONYA YEGOROVA-LEE<br />
I’ve spent the better half of my year travelling, and people often ask<br />
me where I’m from. Despite having the question come my way dozens<br />
of times, I still hesitate before replying. The hesitation is in part<br />
because I don’t know how much of the truth the asker wants to know,<br />
because the truth is not quite so simple. I was born in Korea, but my<br />
mother is Russian and my father Korean. The Russian side of my family<br />
lives in Kazakhstan, but I moved to Australia when I was eight.<br />
Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror I scrutinise my features, trying<br />
to perceive myself from the perspective of a stranger. Your features<br />
tell a story of your heritage, and I wanted to know how others would<br />
read me. When I was six years old, I had asked my grandmother while<br />
pointing to parts of my body, “which half is Korean and which half is<br />
Russian?” I’ve always felt at odds with what was reflected back at me,<br />
and I am still trying to parse together my identity.<br />
I’ve spent the better half of my year travelling, and people often ask<br />
me where I’m from. Despite having the question come my way dozens<br />
of times, I still hesitate before replying. The hesitation is in part<br />
because I don’t know how much of the truth the asker wants to know,<br />
because the truth is not quite so simple. I was born in Korea, but my<br />
mother is Russian and my father Korean. The Russian side of my family<br />
lives in Kazakhstan, but I moved to Australia when I was eight.
Sometimes I just leave the answer at “Australia”, because it’s where my<br />
home is and also where I’ve spent the majority of my life. But this<br />
answer always raises suspicion in the other person’s eyes, because it<br />
doesn’t address why I look the why I do, and it makes me question if I<br />
have a right to call myself an Australian.<br />
The other reason for my hesitation is that frankly, I’m not sure who I am.<br />
I look Korean, but living two-thirds of my life in Australia has made me<br />
feel divorced from my birth country. Walking through Seoul, it’s<br />
comforting to blend in with the crowd, knowing that my features are<br />
reflected in so many other faces. I walked with anonymity. But this<br />
belonging is only superficial, because I have long since forgotten the<br />
language, I don’t know the cultural norms, nor am I connected to my<br />
Korean family. In high school, I was friends with a group of Korean<br />
girls, who’d talk in Korean during breaks. I’d sit on the outskirts of their<br />
conversations, desperately wishing I could be a part of it. Although I<br />
looked Korean enough, I lacked the heritage that brought the other<br />
girls together. I fell out of touch with them when school finished.<br />
With my Russian family, I feel slightly more at ease. My mother has<br />
tried her best to impart her culture onto me. We speak Russian at<br />
home, make regular visits to the Russian deli, cook Russian meals and<br />
have a tight-knit Russian community in Australia. I had a Russian tutor<br />
during high school so I’m able to speak Russian fluently. But despite all<br />
this, I still feel like a misplaced spoon in a drawer full of uniform<br />
cutlery. My grandma used to buy and dress me and my cousin<br />
identical outfits (to avoid any bickering between us) and I can only<br />
imagine what an incongruous image we would have made. No one<br />
would have believed that we were related; one girl tall and blond, the<br />
other stout and brunette. And in family photos the difference is even<br />
more apparent. People regularly ask my mother where she adopted<br />
me or if we’re friends (she always accepts the latter with glee<br />
because she views them to be compliments that they don’t think she is<br />
old enough to be my mother).
Looking at my mother with her green eyes and willowy limbs, I also find<br />
it hard to believe that she’s my mother. You’d have to have a<br />
discerning eye to see the subtle similarities between us, in the curve of<br />
our jaw, the bends of our knees, the shape of our hands. Many<br />
strangers don’t have time for much more than a passing glance at us,<br />
and see only the stark differences. When I am visiting my family in<br />
Kazakhstan, no one assumes I am Russian. The Kazakhs have taken me<br />
on as their own, and speak to me in their language, only for me to<br />
reply sheepishly in Russian that I didn’t understand what they said.<br />
Growing up in a Western country has also moulded my values to take<br />
on a different form than the ones that my Russian family hold. This<br />
difference becomes more and more apparent the older I become<br />
and I struggled to bite my tongue during my last visit. I couldn’t join in<br />
on the discourse during dinner because I knew my opinions differed<br />
from everyone else’s and my Russian wasn’t sophisticated enough to<br />
argue my case coherently.<br />
Right now though, when I think of home, I think of Australia. I picture<br />
early morning runs along the Spit, surfing at Currumbin, driving to work<br />
at Chinderah. Home is where home cooked dinners with friends are,<br />
home is where my mum is, home is the hill in Kirra that I sat at to journal<br />
as the light faded from dusk to night. I am not sure of my identity. But<br />
these mental images have brought me so much comfort over the past<br />
six months that it’s hard to deny that Australia has become my home.<br />
And for now, maybe that is all the confirmation that I needed.
TAKEN ABOVE TAKAYNA COUNTRY (TASMANIA)<br />
YINGINA<br />
BY ELIZABETH HU
Lake<br />
Burrumbeet<br />
W A D A W U R R U N G C O U N T R Y<br />
BY ELIZABETH HU
Ricci, Charmaine the University of Newcastle Medical Society<br />
have created an exceptional guide introducing students to<br />
medical specialties that they can consider pursuing a career<br />
in. Here is an excerpt of the guide, and you can access the full<br />
text from the following links:<br />
Facebook Post:<br />
https://www.facebook.com/100063757262332/posts/73699<br />
4565102446/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v<br />
UNMS Website:<br />
https://www.unms.org.au/guide-to-specialities<br />
FOREWORD SNAPSHOT<br />
As medical students, we all at some stage face the challenging<br />
decision of what area we want to specialise in, but how do we<br />
even begin to decide? Even if you are able to narrow it down<br />
to a few favourites, it is still incredibly overwhelming trying to<br />
wrap your head around what each specialty’s training<br />
program entails, what each training program application<br />
requires, what the lifestyle involves etc. I started this initiative<br />
in my role as Academic Officer for the University of Newcastle<br />
Medical Society (UNMS), when I realised that not only did I not<br />
comprehend the variety of specialties that exist, but even at a<br />
basic level I did not understand the specialising pathway for<br />
each. I found that when I was researching one specific<br />
specialty, it was still quite difficult to find the answers to simple<br />
questions I had about the specialty, such as the<br />
positives/negatives of the specialty, the degree of difficulty to<br />
apply and get on to the training program, the duration of the<br />
program etc. I realised that if I was having trouble when I was<br />
specifically researching just one specialty, then this would<br />
probably be an issue for most medical students: A) For the<br />
students who have no idea what they want to specialise in:
it is so tough to get basic information on lots of different<br />
specialties or just an overview of the specialties because the<br />
information out there online is so detailed and dispersed<br />
across multiple different websites. B) For the students who think<br />
they know what specialty they want to pursue: these students<br />
may be able to do some extensive research and find the<br />
answers to their questions , however they may become too<br />
narrow-minded and never explore or consider other<br />
specialties that they don't necessarily come across or have<br />
placements in during medical school.<br />
I hope this document will be useful in navigating through the<br />
specialising process by helping to: 1) Know what options are<br />
out there 2) Give an overview of what each specialty entails<br />
3) Narrow down which specialties you are interested in 4)<br />
Gain an initial understanding of the specialising pathway for<br />
your chosen specialty/s This document was compiled with the<br />
help of many dedicated students, as well as some amazing<br />
doctors who work in various specialties and generously shared<br />
their lived experience, opinions and advice regarding their<br />
specialty.. A very special thanks to Charmaine Lye, who took<br />
on the role of designing this document and turned my vision of<br />
this document into a reality, one far greater that what I could<br />
have ever imagined!
THANK YOU<br />
FOR READING OUR PUBLICATION