Page 2 - Virtual Vascular

PREFACE
Preface

Covid-19 had placed severe restrictions for our Medical Students to access

patient in clinical areas. This has far reaching consequences in the delivery of
clinical teaching and assessment. Actual clinical exposure and real-time
interaction between students, patients, and teachers is vital. While there are
many online resources and webinars for distanced learning, nothing can
replace the rich diversity of a clerkship attachment.

On the lighter side, this is also an opportunity for the department to explore
newer, more innovative directions to take clinical teaching to a new level.
Traditional didactic knowledge transfer, rigid history taking and old fashioned

demonstrations and physical examinations are not necessary the only learning
modality.

The Division of Vascular Surgery in the Department of Surgery has come up
with this initiative to producing a magazine-style visual journal for our clinical
clerkship students. Our academic and hospital authority staff, senior to
trainees, have contributed by collecting a plethora of real-life clinical
conditions from actual patient encounters and added brief, easy to read
enrichment texts to closely mimic what you would experience as a medical
student with a short attachment in Vascular Surgery.

We present a collection of images to record actual clinical signs, operative
encounters, medical devices, radiology images, and anatomy sketches. These
would encompass a single, simple x-ray to a more detailed description of a
surgical condition. This may serve as casual reading, a guide to tutorials, or a
stimulus to embark on in depth research into the topic.

The virtual journal, which we named Virtual Vascular, is envisaged to be
produced on a monthly basis. If this proves successful, we will try to expand
this to other divisions on a departmental scale. I hope you enjoyed the

experience.

Stephen Cheng
Head, Department of Surgery