Orientation

I had my orientation today, which went really well. Our timetable for practical work has changed slightly, but from what I've seen so far it looks reasonably doable as long as the work's put in. We also got to meet some of the people from the specialist clinic, and hear a little more about what we'll be expected to do while we're in the clinics.

There are three main areas in the specialist clinic, which are Medicine, Surgery, and Radiology. All patients are referred to one particular area of the clinic, although Radiology may do x-rays or ultrasounds for the other departments. They also do some work for outside practices, which will send a patient in for radiographs and then receive the radiograph and patient back at their own clinic to continue the case. Medicine is in charge of the sick patients, or ones that need constant monitoring - mostly cases that aren't surgical in nature. Surgery takes care of the operation side of things, and have a lot of osteopathic equipment for setting fractures, which is an uncommon operation for most patients.

The staff that talked to us were very friendly as well, though there's a definite feeling that they won't stand for any nonsense. They've set up some quite thorough standard operating procedure manuals for us to read at home, which should allow us to get at least a handle on the basics before we start practicals. We were also warned strongly that dress should be appropriate - apparently the G-string population of last year was a bit too high, and as such, people showing them off this year will be "named and shamed", which should be entertaining to watch, though most people I've worked with have dressed appropriately anyway.

Apart from the practical work, it appears that the rest of the year should go fairly smoothly, with more information going up online as the course coordinator organises the information she's receiving from all the other departments. There's just over 50 people in the second year of the course, and all except one is female, so the exception's either really lucky or really unlucky, depending on your view.

We also received our case reports from the previous year, which was exciting. Marks had been handed back previously, but mine was selected to be used as the model case report for this year's first-year students, as I got 94.5%, which was fantastic. There's also a possibility that mine may be able to be altered slightly (mostly word-count based) and published in the NZVNA journal, which would be an amazing success for my first case report, though they do try and include student work where possible. More on that later, hopefully! -crosses fingers-