I finished the board examination last weekend, and I’m finally going to be a PM&R attending physician!
After more than a decade in Hualien, taking the train back and forth to Taipei for classes so many times, I made myself a Taiwan Railways gold member early on. Recently, while preparing for a hospital promotion, I asked Claude to scrape and organize all the PM&R courses I’ve taken over the years. Adding up the online and offline ones, I found out the total broke 150! I never expected to have racked up so much tuition expense without even realizing it 🤣
I still remember during my R1 year, the editor-in-chief of Braddom (one of the most important textbooks in PM&R), Prof. Cifu, came to the Taiwan Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation annual meeting to give a talk on “How to be an outstanding physiatrist.” He talked about how, since becoming an attending physician, he switched fields about every ten years, and managed to reach the top in each one. I was curious what advice he’d give to residents, so I raised my hand and asked. He said: get exposed to all sorts of fields, and don’t limit yourself to just one. Looking back over these four years, I don’t think I let his advice down. Pediatric rehab, neuro, orthopedics, musculoskeletal ultrasound, manual therapy, and so on, I learned whatever I had the chance to. It’s been a very fulfilling four years. Especially thinking back on it right after the exam, I really know so much more than I used to. I’m very happy for myself, and very grateful.
I’m really quite happy that I got to do my training at Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital. Surgical simulations, prolotherapy medical missions in Hualien and Taitung, pediatric rehab case conferences, weekly musculoskeletal ultrasound and cardiopulmonary teaching, plus fully-funded trips to the AAP in the US and ISPRM in Australia, as well as short-term training at NTU Hospital, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, and Linkou Chang Gung. Along the way, I watched how many respected mentors see patients, and ran into quite a few masters, including the highly revered Prof. Lien, Braddom’s editor-in-chief Prof. David X. Cifu, and associate editor Prof. Henry Lew. Being able to see these masters in person was incredibly lucky.
If there’s one step that took this “no limits” idea the furthest over these four years, it was probably this February. While studying for the exam, I kept hearing about vibe coding and lobsters, and I couldn’t resist starting to use Claude Code. Within two days I upgraded my plan from pro to max. I used it to completely redesign my way of “studying”: I built a personal knowledge base that I could Q&A with anytime, and also made a review site for grinding past exam questions. Crossing all the way from clinical medicine to engineering, I unexpectedly discovered that the only real limit is probably just imagination! I was too embarrassed to say I was playing with AI before the exam, but now that it’s over, I can talk about it a lot more with everyone~
Starting in August, I’ll be staying at Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital as an attending physician. It’s a new chapter, so please continue to give me your guidance!