I want to become a doctor because of my passion for medicine. I am from India basically and due to the heavy competition back home, I couldn’t achieve becoming a doctor. Well, without losing my passion for medicine, I learnt “Perfusion Technology” and became a Clinical Cardiac Perfusionist working with the Heart Lung Machines, to keep the heart alive while Open Heart Surgeries. I thought I had achieved something within the medical field, but after 12 years in Perfusion, this year I had the shocking revelation that I still have that never ending passion for doing medicine. This revelation was after coming to Australia, when I heard about Post grad entry and the GAMSAT. So, now, I am just prepared to leave my 12 year successful career life and carrying the burden of a family with my 2 children to sit for the GAMSAT exam in (say, crazy) full confidence and hope to achieve my goal in life.

Well, for the preparation of GAMSAT, I have stopped my studies since nearly 9 years. So, I don’t really know how to start and where to start. But after viewing the comments from different people and also enrolling in the 10day mini course with you, I have some idea of how to prepare for the GAMSAT. Again coming from a ESL background, I will be giving equal importance to all the three sections. I am going to train myself for the 80,30 and 92 that you have taught me. Please, wish me good luck. Thank you for the beautiful support that you are providing to guide us.

Cheers,

Viji.

You can order via cheque via this form here.

http://www.gurumethod.com.au/order1.html

Any problems, drop me an email at michael@gurumethod.com.au

Michael

I am planning to sat the GAMSAT in 2011, can I pay via cheque for the GURU Method.

When is the latest time or month until that I can pay that.

Regards
Raad Al-Hashimie

The absurdity of doctor as a profession always fascinates me when I was little. You are sick; you go to doctors; you wait patiently (maybe that is where the word “patient” come form) with agony, thinking when is it ever going to start? And when they do see you, they cut you, bleed you, and pierce you; you start to think: when is this torment ever going to end? At end of the day, you pay them and thank them for the pain with a kindness on your face, hoping you will never see them again. Yes, they may occasionally spare you a candy, hoping you will stay quite the next time you go to their clinic.

In 1993, Patch Adams, the movie or at least the person portrayed in movie, change my view about doctors completely.

Dr. Patch Adams inspired me the kind of person I want to be. He has passion, guts, kindness, and persistent strife to the best of his ability to attend to patient’s comfort. Medicine to him is not just statistics, hierarchy, and mechanical routine. Dr. Patch Adams believed in “humanistic medicine” ? more than a sense of hope, but a sense of dignity and caring that I would want for my families in hospital when they are ill.

By masking himself as clown and entertain the patients, he believes it is one of the best ways to serve his patients. As the Dr. Patch Adams in explained in his speeches:
“(Deep down) You can say that is fake performance because you are really hurting; so what is true in the formula I am talking about is the intention that is true, and performance is serving the intention.”

But I also believe that there are countless true passionate doctors out there who serve tirelessly with mask and share the same do-good-intention, in surgery, in anesthesia, in oncology, and even in abortion and euthanasia. They too, just in different kind of disguise, giving fake performance to hide the fact they are hurting; and the fact they are powerless, frustrated and helpless in battling against ethical dilemma, disease and futility of death and staggering cut of funding, regardless of their gender, age and their level of obstinacy. Not one doctor who is not compassionate and kind, I genuinely believe, is willing to go through the grueling years of medical schooling and hospital training, starting with painstaking gamsat or umat and interview.

But good intention without an objective is futile. I believe to be a doctor you need more than just do-good-intention, ambition, obligation, commitment; a doctor above all others need to have an intrinsic passion and intuitions to serve patient as you would like how your families to be served, because personalities and abilities alone do not provide a doctors’ explanation to your own existence and motivation. The qualities mentioned above are merely the basic attributes of doctor to facilitate them to do a proper job and in fact to do any other job, which coming even with practice and training: social worker with good intention, politician with ambition; police with obligation; and even thief with commitment (if you think it is a job). An answer to explain the rationality of doctors’ role is of importance and greatly needed before any one who wish eagerly to become one.

See, we all will die one day; and doctors are not curing-death-almighty; and all death is inevitable and imminent. So why doctors? Why would I even want to become one?

This can only be explained by this code: how we perceive we are treated in the hospital is really something special; something that I would genuinely like to offer to future patients, as of what I would like to offer to my family, with a fake smile on my face and a true intention. This is my No.1 quintessence of physician.

p.s.
I thought I wasn’t going to post this, but Michael’s relentless email bang me into it!
Cheers to everyone in their preparation and enjoy the process!

I also wanted to be a doctor and help people through reseach and treatment of serious diseases.

Below is my story:

My name is Bill and I have been suffering from non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which was first diagnosed in 1977. I received 4 weeks of radical dose radiotherapy, in a mantle distribution after the removal of nodular moderately well differentiated and lymphocytic type, having presented with a rapidly growing mass in my right axilla. I have had three subsequent re-occurrences since in, 1982 (splenomegaly), 1989 and 1993. In each instance underwent surgery and massive doses of chemotherapy.

Since then I have also experienced autoimmune diseases (hyper-immunity)including Thrombocytopenia and Haemolytic Anaemia in 1997 and 1999 respectively. Again I received massive doses of chemo and cortical steroids.

In 2000 I was diagnosed with Hypogammaglobulinaenia and have to receive monthly transfusions of human antibodies(Intragam).

2007 I had a quadruple bypass operation because I sustained damage to my arteries, thyroid gland, lungs and heart due to the radiotherapy treatment in 1977.

I also had dreams of becoming a doctor one day, but all my hopes were shattered when I realized that most doctors these days are more concerned in ‘making money’ and becoming successful.

The true reality is that they treat people like slabs of meat rather than human beings. There is no empathy or even sympathy. Gone are the days when doctors really helped the needy and sick, as they actually swore and practiced the Hippocratic oath like the late Dr. Fred Hollows and Dr Charlie Teo to mention a few.