Rural Allowance: Yes
Doctors Quarters:
- Call rooms have a bed and bathroom only. They are usually clean and is a decent place to rest for a few hours. We have a new intern “house” from 2021 which has a kettle, microwave, lunch area, extra beds, fridge, coffee etc, separate from the original call rooms.
- There were no proper Drs quarters. Just flats that some interns stayed in which were in close proximity to the Hospital. It did not feel safe to stay there
Academics:
- Depends which rotation you are doing. Some have more teaching like Paediatrics , Anaesthetics and Family Medicine, others like Surgery and Orthopedics not so much.
- Depending on each department of course, but overall the teaching was very good.
- Paeds, A&E (emergency med), Anaesthetics and fam med have fairly good teaching and academic tuts.
Other departments have very minimal teaching and most of the academics you will need to read on your own.
You do however learn a lot in your day to day work and stanger sees a large variety of patients from simple district level pathology to complex quartinary cases.
Supervision:
- Varies between departments. Seniors in certain departments make Interns do most of the call work and ward work, then with others like Obs & Gynae, Paediatrics, Anaesthetics and ED they are working with the interns.
- Again this is department dependent. But there is always an MO on call with you and you are virtually never left completely alone.
- Usually supervision is fairly good. Gen surge you can occasionally be left to your own devices a little, however I never felt too out of depth.
Clinical Exposure:
- Due to Covid, some conditions were not seen/operated on/some procedures not performed. In general though, the exposure is great.
- You get exposed to everything and become comfortable in skills and procedures needed for commserve.
- Most departments have good clinical exposure with practical experience.
Social Scene:
- Used to have weekly meetings/get togethers as interns but changed when Covid started.
- In those years we were a small group of interns and therefore had lunch together every Wednesday – pizza. This has however changed with the intern group being bigger.
- Very minimal social scene…
Additional Comments:
- I do not regret choosing Stanger for Internship. It was a great learning experience, but keep in mind, it is still rural (some limited resources). There are also great places to live around Stanger that are closer to restaurants, the beach and some nightlife.
- A fairly busy hospital where practical work outweighs academics most often. However I do feel as though I’ve learnt and accomplished enough to be a comfortable comserve if I land up in the bush next year…
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