Three down, one to go!

There's only one week left here at the CWMH, so I thought I'd take the chance to reflect on the medical side of my elective, and how this last week has gone.

Certainly, moving over to the neonatal side of things, I feel like I've been able to get a lot more stuck in and involved than I did on my ward weeks. I've been sharing a ward round with one of the interns (sure, most of the babies are healthy and just need to stay for the mandatory 12/24hrs that are required here, but I still get to examine and write up and feel generally useful), going with her to labour and c-section calls in case any resus is needed (luckily none has been so far!) and even managing a few succesful bloods on the neonates.


That's not to say things have always been straightforward since swaping sides though- take this morning! Straight after handover I headed to the ward like always, and waited two hours, but no intern showed up. The nurses had no clue where they were, the registrar had no clue where they were, the medical students had no clue where they were, and I certainly had no clue where they were! Suffice to say, it has not been my most productive day, which feels frustrating when there's only a few left.

It does sometimes feel like every time I get a handle on how things work around here something else changes- sometimes in a frustrating way, but also sometimes in quite an amusing one. Take this morning- the entire hospital ground to a standstill, with ward rounds delayed and our handover paused so that every doctor could watch the rugby sevens semi-final of Fiji vs NZ. Someone had hung a flag in the handover room, there were snacks passed around and a lot of cheering and cursing over the 14 minute duration of the game. I can promise you, that's not something you'd see in a hospital back home! 

Watching the rugby

I've definitely enjoyed the medical side of my elective, it's just been a bit of a surprise to me how difficult it's been to find things to do and ways to get involved- before I arrived I was worried aboout the exact opposite! Still, there's a few more days to go, and I'm looking forward to getting as much as I can out of them before I head off to Tonga and face a whole new system...
 

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