Bula and Mālō e lelei!

Hi, I'm Jenny a medical student going into my final year of medicine at Cambridge and this is my elective blog. I'm headed out to Suva in Fiji (via Singapore), where I'll spend four weeks in paediatrics with my friends Maria and Ellie, and then on to Nukuʻalofa in Tonga for three weeks of general medicine. 

 Fingers crossed I don't die, hate it, or end up way too sunburnt.

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Reflecting on medicine in Tonga

My placement is nearly over now, so as always I thought I'd take this chance to reflect on my experiences of medicine out here in Tonga.  This ED placement has definitely felt a little more like the elective experience I'd imagined, even down to the moment a nurse asked if I could just prescribe some fentanyl for a patient (oddly enough I declined!) and I think it's definitely made me more confident.  It's amazing to think how nervous I was that first day when the doctor abandoned the department to us, and how I just accept it and get on with things now. It might be partly because we've got lucky and not had to deal with anyone peri-arrest or similar on our own, or it might be partly because I've realised that here in Tonga there's often not a lot you can do for conditions suc as stroke or MI compared to back home. Either way, I feel like I've gained an awful lot of experience just from being left with patients that need treating and only patchy seni...
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Panga-what?

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Here in Tonga, Sunday is strictly a day of rest and religion, with most of the local population heading into church for a large chunk of the day. Almost all shops and restuarants are shut, catching a bus or taxi becomes near impossible and even working out is frowned upon. Not a bad place to spend a Sunday To pass the time, I headed with a group of other medical students to Pangaimoto, a popular island resort just twenty minutes from the harbour, where a huge chunk of the non-religious population gather on a Sunday. For only ~£15 you get a boat transfer, lunch, and free reign of a beautiful island and its white sand beaches. I was there from 11am till 5pm enjoying the sunshine, swimming in the calm water and playing card games in the shade when it got a bit too much. All in all a tough day!  You can climb up this sunken ship, and jump off into the sea Here is the first place I've spotted any signs of damage from the recent cyclone- when you head around the island yo...
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Signing off on Suva

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It's that moment when your heart sinks into your boots, and you hear the words: "Leave your form with me, and I'll ask around for feedback."  Now, it's not like we haven't been going in or anything- Mazza and I have both been in most days for the last four weeks. It's just that the interns I was with for most of that time are no longer in the department, and I can count my interactions with the registrars on the fingers of one hand, so this was not the response I was hoping for when presenting my form for a signature to confirm I'd been attending for the last four weeks here in Fiji.  Sign-offs are my own personal nightmare- I loathe them in a way no-one else seems to, and have spent many a sleepless night trying to plan exactly how I'm going to cram in all the signatures required for a placement. So when it comes to elective, despite being fully aware that there will be some students who got signed off on their first day and never set foot in ...
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