Medical Elective in the Pacific Islands

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

Today, finally I managed to have my chance to do the one thing that most people visit Tonga for- swimming with humpback whales! Each year, hundreds of whales travel from the Antarctica and shelter in the tropical waters around Tonga to give birth, and this makes the island one of only a few places in the world where it's possible to swim with these majestic creatures. Needless to say it's a pretty awesome experience. Organising the trip had proved to be more difficult than I expected: I had a slot on Saturday booked and confirmed several times through my hostel owner, but on the Friday evening he told me that he hadn't actually ever booked it for me, which was incredibly unhelpful! Instead, I asked him to rearrange for next week, but just before I headed off this morning the tour operators called my guesthouse to let me know that they were cancelling the trips till next week due to high winds. One of the other girls was also booked to go out the same day with a different

The tourist attractions here on Tongotapu are a mixed bag, ranging from the underwhelming (Captain Cook's landing point), to the amusingly-bad (the three headed coconut tree) to the under-utilised (most of the beaches and coastline).  In all its glory By far my favourite of the things I've ticked off so far though, has been Anahulu caves. We headed down as a group one afternoon, after some of the others who'd already been, mentioned that there was a cave you could swim in, about thirty minutes from town. I wasn't necessarily expecting a lot, but it seemed a good enough way to kill a few hours. We arrived to find essentially a field, where a guy was sitting on a plastic chair. We each paid him 15TOP to turn on a rusty-looking generator, he pointed to a path leading towards the coast, and that was it. If you're thinking this sounds like the start of a cheesy horror film where a bunch of young brits get picked off one by one, you'd be pretty on the money

Today we made two very valuable contributions to ED. Firstly, we ran the place solo for an hour and half while the doctor went to lunch (he seems to have decided that we're pretty much competent if a little over-cautious) Secondly, and more importantly, we set up a WiFi router after everyone else had failed. We made the password Palangis2018, and since no-one else knows how to change it, I imagine our legacy will live on in Vaiola hospital for many years to come...! Spotted today in ED: The much honoured gift from the country of Japan of.... a filing cabinet. I'm a week in now, and I thought it was a good time to reflect a little about Tonga as a place. Nuku'alofa is lovely- possibly because of the need to rebuild recently, everything is very shiny and new to look at. There's also a lot of churches. More than you could ever think possible in such a small place! A church- in case you weren't sure what one is The people are all also very friendly an