International students: the future

So, looks like after 2010, international students in our state will be at the mercy of the ballot / merit system, if, and it's a big if, the state decides that it needs more interns that can be provided in the shape of local grads.

I think it will take a lot of arm-twisting by the universities to get the state govt to do this: even though our uni in particular brings in A$20m+ pa (my back of an envelope estimate which may be very wrong), I don't that that's enough to sway their current position.

Although I have been wrong before. Not least in hepatology tutorials.

Overseas students: short term salvation

Well, it looks like the international students who seemed to have missed out are going to be sorted for a training place... this year. Not sure how the state govt is going to find places for them to train given that one idea is to find interstate positions and all of the states are in the same boat. However, this is great news and must be a relief for those students who found themselves in this position.

This situation came as a surprise to most overseas students, but it's been in the wind implicitly for a couple of years and explicitly since the document I showed below entered the public domain months ago. Perhaps this change to scarcity of jobs is such a cultural shift that no one even considered checking to see what the actual situation was.

Whatever the case, I've spoken to some justifiably angry and upset people this week. For some students, by heading to Australia they have given up on their rights to be trained in their home country and so they fall between two stools.

Personally, I think the med student council should take more of an active role: it is at least their respsonsibility as much of that of the university to look after the interests of the student body and to make sure that students are aware of this sort of thing.

The next few years will see this problem get worse and for all students to be affected. This doesn't seem to be appreciated by the student council: I would say that at this time this body has a significant task ahead of it probably for the first time in memory (judging from my experience) and need to get active now.

For the time being, perhaps pub crawls and international student social nights may have to have a lower priority.

News just in

This is interesting: looks like there's a presentation from our university's medical school office regarding the training issue.

I'll head along and see what's the go.

Dress code redux

So, I turn up in the old bankers' bag of fruit and tie having been told in no uncertain terms so to do. New tutor turns up: lose the suit. Ok... so looks like it's chinos then. Mmm...

On the wards

And so, onto the Australian wards for the first time proper.

My clinical experience to date has all been gained in the UK. And in the UK, this experience was either in a London teaching hospital which was a vertical town in itself or in an (ex)industrial northern city's teaching hospitals with mile long central corridors and no heating.

So, first impressions are that this new hospital is a much nicer place to be. It even has an escalator in it, which, I hate to say, impressed me. And I grew up in a town that had not only an Arndale Centre but an Arndale Centre with a large Golden Egg restaurant (I told you I was old) and a flock of fibreglass flamingos in a pyramid which also functioned as a fountain.

So, as they say: Don't talk to me about sophistication. I've been to Leeds.

Moving into the wards, I can't help but make comparison between this public hospital and those I spent time on in the UK:

1) Colour scheme: nice and lively but not too lively here. The UK schemes tended to the magnolia with appended scuff marks all over.

2) Light. My God, the wards here are nice and light. This may be due to the climate, but airy is not a word that springs to mind when I think about my northern experience.

Ok, here come the important contrasts:

3) Four beds per room. Same size rooms, 33% fewer beds than most wards I worked on and 50% fewer than some. There is lots of room for the patients to wander over to the huge windows and take in the view of the posh suburbs (this being an inner city hospital). This also means that only four people share the (very clean) lavatory. Further, it means that seven nervous 18 yo medics and one old dude can fit comfortable behind the curtains to talk to a patient.

4) The place is spotless. And I mean spotless.

5) Modern nurses stations. All wipe clean rather than the old school wooden five nurses to a station affairs in the UK (which I actually like from a design POV).

6) No mixing of cases for the wards. Case in point: in the UK I had a 92 yo man in a pre-surgical ward because they ran out of social workers or something. Nothing like that (yet) here.

7) Many fewer alcohol had washing stations. Because of all of the above, there seems to be no need to have a big potful of the stuff at the foot of each bed. Sure, it's easily accessible but it isn't ubiquitous.

8) Expensive canteen with no fry ups in a breadcake. I'm afraid that here the Australian experience falls far short of the UK experience. Smoothies? Tchoh.