Elective training program
Name: Fatma AL Badi
Country of elective: Australia/Queensland/Brisbane
Name of the hospital: Princess Alexandra hospital
Coming up with the idea of doing an elective training outside the usual training
hospitals is a great idea, weather the elective will be inside or outside the country.
Because this will give the student the chance to be exposed to some other health
systems (which they might work with some day) and to try some new kind of training
that could be similar or different to the training system in SQUH and related
hospitals. I have chosen Australia as a place of my elective after 6th year because I
have heard from the previous students who did their elective there how great the
overall experience was with them, so decided to go through all aspects from that
experience.
Before anything I have to admit that choosing Australia as a place for elective as well
as for tourism wasn't a bad idea at all. It was really a peaceful, clean and nice place to
visit. We reached there on Saturday 2nd May 2009,it was really along flight it took us
23hours.We spent the first two days in arranging our self and trying to adapt
ourselves to the place. Monday was a public holiday so we got the chance to know how
to use the public transport to reach the hospital and to know where it is exactly. That's
why by Tuesday we were ready to start our training in the hospital without any
troubles. When we arrived there we met the student coordinator of the university of
Queensland (UQ),she gave us the card for the student room, locker key and ID for
hospital system and library after putting deposit of 50 AUD.
I started with geriatrics and rehabilitation unit. They got a separate building which
called GARU behind the main building of the hospital. They have three teams' bunya,
cassia and banksia. I was posted with bunya team who mainly deal with the amputees.
Each team has two consultants, one registrar, one interne and the therapist team
which consists of family therapist, speech therapist, social worker and 2
physiotherapists with the pharmacist an inchrge nurse. Although I had a busy
schedule with the team I was enjoying the time with them.it took me only few days to
get use to the system because they were so helpful involving me in everything, giving
me the trust to do so many thing just like the interne including doing admission,
writing the patients notes, present them in the consultant round and follow up
them.als I was allowed to procedures like cannulation and blood collection. On
Mondays and Thursdays we do the round with the consultant which lasts4 hours at
least. On Wednesdays and Friday we do the round with the consultant and sometime
with the professor in the main building to see patient who needs geriatrics consultation
in different medical wards. On Tuesday's mornings till 1 pm we have the journal club
and the case conference with the team. About the afternoon work we have memory
clinic on Mondays and general clinic on Thursdays from 1-5pm.attending those clinics
were so beneficial for me, I have learned so many things providing that the doctor
were very keen to teach us. On the rest of the weekdays we usually do the ward work
and new admissions. Beside this I got a chance to attend the final year tutorials and
student grand round in which the students present different cases to discuss it once a
week. I am really appreciating the team how friendly and helpful they were and I am
very grateful for them. I liked to be with them that's why I asked for 2 more weeks in
geriatrics.
Then I spent the last 2 weeks in endocrinology. Every weekday except Thursdays we
have morning rounds in the medical wards and clinics in the afternoons. Sometimes
we have clinics and rounds running at the same time so it is up to me to choose which
one I prefer to attend. They have clinics for general endocrine, diabetes, obesity and
bone clinic.i found it so interesting and I saw varieties of endocrine cases even the rare
ones like MEN1&2, pheochromocytoma, acromegaly. Other common cases like
diabetes, diabetic ketoacidosis, Addison disease diabetes inspiduis and pituitary
adenomas. The doctors also were very c
Having said that, we had lots of leisure activities in the weekends, we did a lot of
tourism and we had enough fun. We visited many places, beaches and parks. And I
will never forget our trip to Sydney the most famous Australian city in which we
visited all famous places like the opera house, Sydney tower, Sydney aquarium and
harbor bridge.
Costs:
Ticket: 570 O.R
Insurance: 30 O.R
QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY: 100 O.R
ACCOMODATION: 460 O.R
OTHERS: approximately 800 O.R
In the following lines I will summarize the all the positive and negative points for the
whole journey
Positive points:
9 Get exposed to different health system
9 Learning more about different specialties
9 Encounter English as a language since it is needed all the time
9 Gaining more self confidence as we managed all-things by ourselves thus we got more
independence
9 We got a chance to express ourselves as trainee from Middle East
9 We got a chance to widen our friendship with students from different nationalities
9 We got a very great chance to do really nice tourism
Negative points:
Just few ones
9 We were accepted in different rotations than the ones we applied for
9 we did not get the student card which if we got the right to get it,made our life easier
at the end of the day, it was one of the greatest experience I ever had in my life and I
would like to gratefully thank the College of Medicine and Health science in SQU for
giving us the chance to do so.
exclusively I would like to send many thanks the great person who gave us a very great
support and help from different aspects in spite the different obstacles we faced, for
his smiling face every time we went to his office which was just a relief for us, for his
continuous follow-up asking about us even after we reached there,
Although the previous few words were not enough to describe his efforts I would like
to deeply thank Mr.Glori Almedia.
Also I would like to thank:
Dr.Mohammad AL Azri
Mr.Salim AL Khaldi for their help and support
FOR ANY QUERIES OR EVEN IF YOU WANT SOME PICTURES YOU ARE
WELCOME, THIS MY EMAIL ADDRESS
Dr.fatma_albadi@hotmail.com