All doctors are haunted by the mistakes they made. Some fare better than others, some not.

I remember the various conversations we had, colleagues, friends, flatmates, most over meals, some with tears involved.

How can you not be, when a simple scrawl-your signature-could quite literally cause as much harm as good?

I don’t think anything quite prepares you for life as a doctor and the responsibility that comes with it.

I remember stepping out onto the ward for the very first time; it was meant to be the highlight, the epitome of medical school, what we all slogged for: the day when we become doctors!

Instead it was a day full of edginess-of course, I hear you remark, you’re saving lives! How can you not be?-but the nervousness wasn’t for the life-saving drama that Grey’s Anatomy portrays so well or the glamour of bringing someone back to life.

It was for ‘everyday’ decisions… ‘Everyday’ for a doctor that is.

Medicine is so far advanced now that we take over so much of normal physiology.

Not drinking, we give you fluids through a drip directly into your veins. Are you diabetic? We give you insulin to help your body breakdown the sugar you consume.

For a baby doctor, this is where it all starts, the simple everyday stuff.

How much fluids should I prescribe? Too much intravenous fluids, could potentially send a patient into fluid overload with fluid accumulating in their lungs; too little fluid and you could potentially cause kidney damage.

Soon, all these become a ‘norm’.

We soon learn that the human body is an amazing thing, able compensate for the various insults we throw at it. Homeostasis, we call it.

Our bodies can hold surprisingly a large amount of water, maintaining a fine balance between the water that’s in the cells, bathing the cells and of course in the veins.

It takes quite a lot to throw the balance awry in someone fit and healthy, not so for the extremes of ages.

And so we ‘get away’ with it, refining our skills as time passes on.

But some things are less forgiving.

I remember the time when I had excised a skin cancer, but it had been incomplete.

I had done it with supervision, and we had taken it all the way down to the nasal bones thinking we had gotten everything out.

We then did a ‘local’ flap and had advanced skin down from the forehead to cover the defect. 6 weeks later, my boss had the responsibility of breaking the news to the patient that the excision had been incomplete.

The logical thing would have been to ‘re-excise’ it, but it wasn’t so straightforward.

The local flap meant that the tissues were distorted and it would have been difficult to be sure the few cells left could be re-excised, not to mention that the cosmetic result would be suboptimal.

The other options were radiotherapy or watch and wait.

The patient opted for radiotherapy in the end.

There is a 4 per cent risk of incomplete excision, and each patient is warned that another procedure might always be on the cards but it didn’t make me feel any better.

I resolved then to be ‘braver’, to ‘cut out more’, but there’s always risks with that.

What if in the ‘more’ you take out a nerve and paralyse the face? What if in the ‘more’ you aren’t able to close the wound?

You ‘live and learn’ they say. And so with time, experience is gained.

Your mistakes guide your practice, making you a better doctor.

You learn the art of practicing medicine, gaining an arsenal of skills at which to deploy, knowing when you can have a bit more leeway in challenging the body’s physiological reserves.

You toughen up, learning to live with your shortcomings and your own mortality.

Callousness occurs, knowingly or unknowingly.

Some doctors lose their humanity more than others, perhaps consciously or unconsciously reflected in the choice of specialty they eventually choose.

I chose to go into plastic surgery, a specialty where I get the opportunity to reconstruct various defects of natural or human causes; something where I could see the results of my handiwork upfront, but also a specialty where death is an uncommon occurrence.

Some of my colleagues are doing palliative care, where dying is part of everyday life.

Some are intensivists, where you could literally ‘play God’, deciding whether or not to prolong somebody’s life.

But underneath it all, whichever specialty we go into, we each have our own struggles with the responsibility which only gets greater as time progresses.

Fluid prescribing no longer fazes me, but I now have the responsibility for deciding if someone needs surgery.

Another colleague recently had the responsibility of giving advice that would most probably lead to the withdrawal of care for a patient; hardly a decision anyone would dream of making, yet we do on a daily basis.

Yes, support is available from senior colleagues but advice, you learn very quickly, is given based on your assessment of the patient.

The skills you learnt in medical school.

Present the wrong findings, and you get suboptimal advice.

We, the seniors soon learn which juniors are safe, which are unsafe, which ones whose judgements can be trusted, which ones where it might be better to have a quick look yourself.

I’ll be honest and admit I can’t remember where I first heard of this theory, but it clearly impacted me enough that I still remember it.

Knowledge presents in 4 different areas, the known known, the known unknown, the unknown known and the unknown unknown.

Everybody knows what they know, everybody loves finding out that about the hidden skill (the unknown known), everybody groans at the known unknown (the textbook of knowledge awaiting for your devouring before the exams) but perhaps the most unnerving is the last category, for how can you learn what you don’t know that you don’t know?

Time and again the ‘miracle cures’ of today are the ‘curse’ of tomorrow and they certainly weren’t kidding when they said a career of ‘lifelong learning’.

But perhaps it is the fear of causing unnecessary harm that keeps you safe.

So we laugh about our mistakes, our near misses, we commiserate when we lose a patient, we work through what could have been done better.

We back each other up knowing that facing the same situation, we might have done the exact same thing, trusting in the one that holds life and death.

For truly as doctors we can’t prevent death, we just try and push it back, a day at a time.

So parents, please don’t force your children into doing medicine.

Glamorous though it may seem, the hours are long, exams are always round the corner and are expensive, but above it all, it is people’s lives you’re gambling with-the very same people for whom your child will be responsible for.

Medicine is not for everyone.

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Shanghai – Several Chinese iPhone users have claimed that their handsets caught fire or exploded, according to a Shanghai consumer watchdog which called on tech giant Apple to address the complaints.

Fresh on the heels of Samsung’s worldwide Galaxy Note 7 safety fiasco, the state-run Shanghai Consumer Council said it had received eight reports in recent months of iPhones that spontaneously combusted while being used or charged.

Read also: Samsung Galaxy Note 7 catches fire in fast food joint

The report, seen on the council’s website, was posted Friday.

It quoted one woman as saying her iPhone 6s Plus exploded in August, shattering the screen and leaving the battery and back of the phone blackened.

Apple provided the woman with a new iPhone but did not address the cause of the incident, the report said.

“Apple should be responsible for consumers” and deal with complaints in a timely manner, the council said.

“A large amount of consumer complaints are not solved effectively.” The council said it has received a sixfold surge in total complaints against Apple in the past two months, including sudden shutdowns of the iPhone 6 and 6s even though batteries still have enough power.

The council did not make clear where the complaining iPhone users were located.

Apple last month offered to change iPhone 6s batteries for Chinese users who complained of what the company called “accidental shutdown”.

The offer was effective for handsets made between September-October, 2015.

At the time iPhone insisted the shutdowns did not constitute a safety problem.

AFP was unable to immediately obtain a response from Apple in China over the consumer watchdog report.

Samsung suffered a severe blow over its Galaxy Note 7’s woes. The huge South Korean electronics manufacturer was forced to recall some 2.5 million units.

Apple saw its revenue in the Greater China market plunge 30 per cent in the three months ended September 24, with analysts saying it faces rising competition from Chinese smartphone brands.

Read also: Man claims iPhone 7 burst into flames in his car

A Pakistani court has charged the brother of a slain social media star with her murder, the final step before a trial begins in one of the country’s highest-profile “honour killings”.

Model Qandeel Baloch, who shot to fame for her provocative selfies that polarised the conservative Muslim country, was strangled in July by her brother Muhammad Waseem.

He said she had brought shame on the family and confessed to his crime in a press conference after his arrest.

The model was sexually demeaned by her detractors. But fans praised her for daring to challenge social norms by appearing in videos that by Western standards would appear tame.

Waseem was produced before a court in the central city of Multan on Monday along with his cousin Haq Nawaz whom police deemed to be an accomplice, though the nature of his involvement was unclear.

A second indicted accomplice, taxi driver Abdul Basit, is on bail.

“Judge Muhammad Saeed Raza indicted all the three men and adjourned the hearing until December 8,” a government prosecutor told AFP on condition of anonymity Tuesday, because he is not authorised to speak to media.

He added the accused had pleaded not guilty.

“The court also asked police to submit a complete list of charges against all the accused on the next date of hearing,” the prosecutor added.

Some of Baloch’s more notorious acts included offering to perform a striptease for the Pakistani cricket team, and donning a plunging scarlet dress on Valentine’s Day.

She also posed for selfies with a high-profile mullah in an incident that saw him swiftly rebuked by the religious affairs ministry.

Waseem told a press conference in July he was not remorseful over what he did, calling his sister’s behaviour “intolerable”.

Her murder reignited calls for action against so-called “honour killings”, in which a victim is killed by a close relative – who could subsequently be pardoned by another family member under Pakistan law.

In October parliament passed a law aimed at removing the ability to forgive “honour” killers. But critics contend some loopholes still exist.

Pakistan plans to rename a university centre for physicist Abdus Salam, its first Nobel laureate, after more than 30 years of all but disowning his achievements, as a member of a minority sect barred from identifying itself as Muslim.

Salam, the first Muslim to win the prize for science, was a member of the Ahmadi sect, which is considered heretical by law in Pakistan, denounced by Muslim leaders and targeted by violent extremists.

The office of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said it had given approval for the National Centre for Physics at the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, the capital, to be renamed after Salam.

“The prime minister has directed the ministry of federal education to put up a formal summary for renaming the centre, for approval of the president,” it said in a statement on Monday.

Salam shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg for helping to pave the way to the discovery of the “God particle,” one of science’s greatest achievements in the last 100 years.

However, under pressure from right-wing clerics and students, Salam was banned from lecturing at public universities during his lifetime, and even after winning the Nobel.

The Ahmadi minority holds that a prophet followed the Prophet Mohammed, who founded Islam.

But that view runs counter to the Muslim religion’s central belief that Mohammad was the last of God’s messengers.

Killing Ahmadis earns the assailant a place in heaven, say some clerics, who distribute leaflets carrying the home addresses of sect members.

In 1974, a Pakistani law declared Ahmadis as non-Muslims and in 1984, a new law made it possible to jail Ahmadis for “posing as a Muslim” or “offending a Muslim’s feelings”.

Salam is buried in the Pakistani town of Rabwah, a major centre for Ahmadis, where his gravestone was defaced by local authorities who removed the word “Muslim” from an inscription that called him “the first Muslim Nobel laureate”.

“All his life, Professor Salam wanted to set up an institution for physics in Pakistan but no one let him,”Saleemuddin, the Ahmadi community’s Pakistan spokesman, told Reuters.

“They didn’t honour him in his life but we are happy they have finally done so now, better late than never,” added Saleemuddin, who uses only one name.

“Only when we begin to honour our true heroes will Pakistan be on the right track.”

SEOUL – South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Tuesday she would accept the result of an impeachment vote against her this week but indicated she would not step down now as demanded by opposition parties, a top official of her Saenuri Party said.

She also said she had been willing to accept her party’s proposal for her to step down in April next year, Saenuri Party official Chung Jin-suk said, after a meeting between party leaders and the embattled president.

Park faces a pivotal week, with an effort to impeach her gaining support from within her party.

Read also: Tens of thousands of workers and students up pressure on S Korea president Park to resign
S Korea president says willing to leave office early

Locally made blue sandals may be the nation’s next fashion hit after a social media post about the footwear made by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on Sunday quickly attracted public attention.

Kompas.com reported that Jokowi, who had travelled to Balikpapan in East Kalimantan to promote the tax amnesty, bought the sandals during his visit to Balikpapan Superblock business centre.

On his official Facebook and Twitter accounts, Jokowi wrote, “Dropped by Balikpapan Superblock [and] bought a pair of sandals. Fortunately, there was a 50 per cent discount with an extra 20 per cent discount. Normal price was Rp 299,000 (S$31.75), after discount, Rp 119,000 (S$12.63). A good quality Indonesian product.”

The sandals were from Fladeo, a local footwear brand.

The post quickly went viral with many netizens predicting that the sandals would be the next fashion hit, similar to the bomber jacket and blue umbrella that have been popularised by the President.

@yontin, for instance, praised Jokowi as a cool and humble president for his appreciation of local products.

@jerry ap also shared his amazement, since everything the President wears usually becomes a trend.

Another netizen commented that Jokowi’s act could help increase the popularity of local products among consumers.

Read also: Indonesia’s president Joko Widodo sparks fashion trend with khaki bomber jacket