4TH MELAKA DENTAL CONFERENCE & TRADE EXHIBITION

IT’S NOVEMBER ALREADY?!

I’m back at home now for the deepavali holidays. Today will be the last day before I head back to Malacca. I thought maybe I should do some write up on some past events that happened few months back. There’s much to share and I’m just down right lazy to update. I know, shame on me.

Alright, this post will be a summary of my 2 days “volunteering” work at the 4^th Melaka Dental Conference which took place last October. It was held for 3 days but I only attended the last 2 days. The event was organized by the southern zone MDA and our faculty. 

Dr.Dhana asked for a group of us, from batch 2 to help out in the registration table. (Our senior insisted that we do the job. Sigh.) A total of 12 of us were on the job. On the 2^nd day, I was stationed at Mahkota Medical Center for the dental nurse talks. The other team was at Hatten Hotel. We arrive at the hospital around 7.45 am. I thought that at least someone would brief us on what to do, but we ended up teaching ourselves what do to. Vino and Chien Ying handled the registration while I just usher the people in the room. After some time, there were two other doctors who turned up for a while to handle the payment. (They weren’t friendly at all. Seriously) Syasya and Silk were the MCs for the day. The talks were actually fine. We did gain a lot of information from them. Dr. Naresh was there to supervise us. Lunch was provided by the hospital cafeteria. It was quite yummy. The day ended with dental nurses all over the registration tables, grabbing their certificates and demanding for their resists which we’re not responsible for. Imagine the chaos then. It was really all in a mess as some certs when missing and the head staff nurses all shaking their heads over their staffs’ behavior. There were also a lot of spelling mistakes in the certs which we couldn’t do anything to correct it. Hopelessly, we just told them to get to Hatten hotel to get it reprinted there. And oh, we did come across many who wanted to go back early, asking for their certs as early as lunch time. I didn’t know what was the fuss of a piece of paper until the last day of the conference. Besides that, there were also limited amount of goodie bag from Sensodyne and some nurses did not get it. We were even called “lousy” by some just because of that. Oh well, what could we do, we tried our best to make things less disastrous and mind you, there weren’t anyone to guide us.

The next day, all twelve of us were at Hatten Hotel.  We took turns to take care of the registration table. The talks again were pretty good. Outside of the conference hall, there were many booth set up by many dental suppliers. We got many samples of different products and even had hands on using the laser on an apple. I also bought some cute tooth-shaped case dental flosses. Lunch was scrumptious and we can really see everyone enjoying it. We started handing out the certs after lunch though there were still talks going on. At least it was not chaotic as the day before. We can see all the doctors were so glad to get hold of the certs and leaving happily after that. Hardly anyone was left during the last talk.

From this, I get to see the true reality of a dental conference. Most dentist, staff nurse and DSA just come for the certificate which holds points. I was told that these points are important for them to renew their license with MDC. (Correct me if I’m wrong) That’s why they kept asking about it throughout the conference.     

All I can say, we were exhausted at the end of the day. So much for experiencing a dental conference. 

Ps: Sorry for all words and no photos, we were just too busy to snap any.