Month: April 2006

There is a courtyard between the orthopedic and surgical wards which is a designated smoking area, and there are always people out there during the day, but I’m always amused and astonished to see how many people you find out there at night.

Walk past it at 10pm and even though it’s pitch black out there you can still see vague shapes moving in the gloom, and the occasional orange glow as they suck on their cigarettes and cause the ends to light up.

It’s 10pm! I don’t approve of smoking at the best of times, but if you’re outside and smoking at 10pm, it seems as though you can’t really be that sick can you?

On friday night I did ward call, and saw the two ends of life.

I had to declare an old lady dead, after she had passed away as a result of her cancer, in the palliative care ward.

Then as I was leaving the palliative care ward I saw a literally newborn baby being wheeled down the corridor in a crib obviously off to the maternity ward.

It says something about life, but I’m not sure what it is right now.

One of the features of internship which I’m a little uncertain about is the wisdom of changing departments every 10 weeks.

I have just changed from Orthopedics to general surgery, which is not that big a change, but others have gone from medicine to surgery, or mental health to obstetrics. or visa versa.
I was at a point in orthopedics where I knew the team, I knew the nurses and allied health staff, I knew how things worked in theatre and on the ward and in outpatients. Basically I had gotten to the point where I was good at my job and felt I was being a genuinely useful member of the unit… and then they shifted me.

Now admittedly the learning curve is not as steep this time around, but I’ve still gone back to the situation of not knowing the skills and temparements of my team members or of the nursing and other staff. I also don’t know all the differences in the way the surgery department’s systems and processes work yet either, so basically they have taken a bunch of interns had been trained up to usefulness, and made them inefficient again.

Now as I understand it many countries in the northern hemisphere run their medical internships on a system where you do a 6 month medical term and a 6 month surgical term, and I have to say that I wonder if that isn’t a better arrangement. That way you spend a month or so upskilling, and then 5 months just being good and efficient.

On the other hand however I suppose that people who got stuck for 6 months on a discipline you didn’t like, with a team you didn’t get along with would probably discagree with me on this.