As the title implies, today was my last day of peds at King George! Starting Monday, I'll finally be at queens, which means a 5-10 minute walk every day, instead of a 10 minute walk and then 20 minute bus ride. Also, since all of the sicker kids are at Queens, should be more to learn.
So far, here's what I like and dislike about the UK rotations:
Like:
1. Good teaching, and it's frequent. They usually start late, which is annoying, but most of it is very relevant and very good. Almost every day, at least once a day, we sit down for 45 minutes to an hour and discuss a particular topic. So far, they've included diabetes, cystic fibrosis, evaluation of headache, seizures, fever, rash, etc., all of course related to pediatric presentations.
2. It's easy. Our regular hours are 9-5, but I've never actually stayed until 5. Every wednesday is half day, and I was out by 1pm for the last 3 days. If you need to be somewhere, just go. The UK students are usually out even before I leave!
3. You can see as much or as little as you want, as long as you ask. Want to draw blood or start an IV? Just ask. If you want to spend all day on the ward and interview all the patients, you can. If you want to go to the A&E (ER), just go, ask for a registrar (resident), and see patients. Need to spend more time studying? Go home or to the library and study.
4. Travel wherever you want around Europe on the weekends
5. No call, nights, or weekends (at least not in my rotation)
Dislike:
1. Typical stuff that goes along with not being in the US - it's more expensive, food is not as good, internet kind of sucks, no iPhone access, etc. etc.
2. I would like more of a schedule and more direction on where to go and what I'm supposed to be doing. Things seem very haphazard. If they feel like teaching (which they often do), they'll just randomly announce in the morning to be in the conference room whenever they think they want to teach
3. All of their drug names are different, so it takes a while to have any idea what drugs they're giving. They also use different units for many of their labs, so it takes a while to figure that out too. A glucose of 11 is VERY low for us, pretty high for them (multiply by 18 to get our equivalent unit). Finally, they use drugs that we don't use, and don't use drugs that we do. For example, they still regularly use chloramphenicol for peds and they don't use sulphamethoxazole. Is it any wonder that they have like a 75% resistance rate to trimethroprim?
4. They do things a bit differently here and I kind of like things the way I'm used to. Doctors here regularly have to run around looking for x-rays or labs (nothing is computerized and they don't seem to have techs). One doctor told me he spends 30% of his time treating patients and 70% running around looking for things. Nurses also usually can't start cannulas (IV's) or draw blood.
5. Things are SLOW! Patients are regularly held overnight (or longer) while they wait for blood results, scans, dietary, EEGs, etc.
6. Did I mention it's expensive? The dollar kind of sucks.
2 comments:
We don't have Wednesday afternoons off! Also, I often stay well after 5! Remember though we have 3 years to do what you do in 2 so of course our hours are shorter. Like you said in another post you can do as much or as little as you want, generally anyway, it depends on the school, hospital, consultant etc.
Oh and yep very few nurses can put in cannulas but our stuff is computerised!
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