Graham Turner Bursary recipient’s presentations
Three of the medical students from the University of UNSW came to give us a presentation of their trips for their medical exchange program,
giving us an insight into their experience when they went to two hospitals each.
They all also took the chance to have a great holiday, which was a good chance to unwind before they headed back to Australia
to finish the last 6 months of their medical training.
The first, Edward Rose, went to Malta and then Iceland.
Ed explained it was a real experience with two very varied medical tasks.
Malta was predominantly water based issues, from swimming to snorkelling accidents, to serious diving related problems,
the most common was Nitrogen Narcosis, or as commonly known as the bends,
as such the Hospital has a decompression chamber for such issues.
Ed told us he had a go in the chamber, 5 minutes of pressurisation and then 3 hours for the decompression.
Not very exiting after all, however a good experience for what the patients have to go through.
Ed then went to Iceland, a similar size and population to Tasmania, where he is from,
but here the general hospital had not a lot of accidents to deal with, so the Paramedics were also the firefighter,
and the first call that Ed went on was to a fire.
So he said he learnt a whole new set of skills, as the paramedics were happy to let Ed fight fires as well.
Second presentation was Katherine Grellman, she went to the sports medicine facility for the Sydney Swans,
which she said was state of the art and a real experience, as she got to go to the game as a player support doctor,
and get involved with the whole rehabilitation program for the players.
Katherine then went to a equivalent sports medicine hospital in England, which was a public hospital,
set up before the Olympics and aimed at increasing the support for sports in general.
Katherine said that the public sports medicine would soon be going to a similar model as we have here,
more orientated towards clubs running their own.
Third student was Hannah Bruce, she went to South Africa and then the Solomon Islands, working in the hospitals in the emergency wards and in the operating theatres.
Hannah went to the Tygerberg Hospital Cape Town , where she had a great time working with lots of other medical students,
and seeing some great sights as a tourist.
Next Hannah went to Honiara, where she was very committed to trying to improve the general conditions
and the equipment that the Solomon Islands Hospital had, as she expected it to be less than Australia but it was worse than she had thought.
She had a great time and learnt lots of things from the medical staff and other visiting doctors,
but was well aware that they could do so much more with additional / better equipment.
Hannah also spent a time as a patient, as she contracted Dengue Fever whilst she was there,
but thankfully she recovered quite quickly and was able to work in the hospital.
This is the Dengue Fever Ward, outside the Hospital. Many die in the Solomon Islands from Dengue fever,
due to poor conditions and lack of medical knowledge and equipment/medicine.
There was a great lack of support and lots of equipment missing that she would have expected in an operating theatre and the hospital,
as such she was very keen to get our club involved with supplying any equipment we could get through a DIK program. More to follow.
All of our members were impressed with the quality of these young doctors to be, and we were very happy to be able to help
them in their journey to becoming doctors, we wish them all the very best and hope they will all have success in the last six months of their training,
and their medical careers, where ever they pursue it.