CMSA Accreditations:
DCH(SA) DCH(SA)
Dip Obst(SA) Dip Obst(SA)
DA(SA) DA(SA)
DipPEC(SA) DipPEC(SA)
Dip HIV Man(SA) Dip HIV Man(SA)
Dip Int Med(SA) Dip Int Med(SA)
Rural Allowance: No
Doctors Quarters:
- No comments yet.
Academics:
- Accredited for DA and DipEC diplomas.
- No academics for comserve. We were just used as the work force of hospital.
- We were doing Comserve during Covid, so everything was a bit different than usual. HH is both DipEc and DA accredited, to my knowledge, but none of those Diplomas were availible to us during Covid. Teaching is often self-initiated from an accepted knowledge base. Remember, you are not an intern anymore and baseline knowledge should reflect that.
Supervision:
- "There will always be registrar/consultant supervision during the day, but during the evening you will mostly be required to work completely independently as well as to take leadership of the team to an extent. There will always be a registrar on call with you, but he/she might be occupied somewhere else in the hospital, often leaving you as the next most senior person working with several interns. (Note, however, that most evenings are also partially covered by an MO until 23h00.) You will do most of your overtime in the ED and will see anything and everything, ranging from neonates, paeds, O&G to acute trauma, ortho and medical emergencies. You should be able to manage the most of these independently. That said, the reg is always just a phone call away for advice and will often help in the ED if they are free otherwise.
You will also be required to be comfortable doing either c-sections or anaesthetics without any supervision as emergency caesers (and infrequently also ruptured ectopics) often happen during the evening and the responsibility then falls on the reg and MO/Com Serve doctor to manage the case. " - Depends on how comfortable you are with multiple different disciplines coming out of internship. I felt adequately supported, but do feel my Internship prepared me well in all areas. There are ALWAYS consultant cover during daytime and there is ALWAYS a Fam Med reg on at night. However, Comserves do have to step up to a higher level of responsibilty compared to Interns, especially with regards to C-sections after hours. As a Comserve, you will be expected to do either anaesthetics or the caesar, while the Reg does the other. On rare occasions an on call MO can be called in, but the notion is trying to avoid this as the MO will have to work again the next day.
Clinical Exposure:
- “HH is a well functioning primary level hospital offerring all the major services: paeds, neonates, O&G, anaesthetics, ortho, surgery, medicine and psych. They even have a small HDU, where non-invasive ventilation, inotropic support, etc. can be given. The possibilities in terms of exposure is therefore almost endless. Note, though, that it will be on a primary care level, so don’t expect to see tertiary hospital cases here.
You will not necessarily get much say in where you will be working. Although management tries their best to accommodate requests to an extent, ultimately the goal is to keep the hospital functional and not to let you work exactly where you want to. They will therefore let you work where hands are needed. You will likely also rotate through a view departments, so there is definitely a possibility of having a rotation through your department of interest.
All overtime is done in the emergency department (ED), where you will really get exposed to anything. As HH works closely with Tygerberg Hospital (TBH) to aid in stabilising ill/complex patients at a primary care level before transporting them to TBH, you will also become experienced in liasing efficiently with the receiving team at TBH.” - Great exposure to literally all fields of Medicine (mostly while on call in the ED) as your rotations may include only one or two specialities. (Our rotations were largely Covid, again likely different from other years.)
Departments worked in:
- Internal Medicine, Anaesthetics, Psychiatry, Emergency Department, OPD’s - Rotation periods are generally 3-4 months each. The year at HH is defintely the time to get hands-on experiece. If you show that you know what you are doing and can work safely, you will get a lot of practical exposure in almost all departments, including cutting time in theatre, if you’d like.
- Internal Medicine, Emergency Department
- Internal Medicine, Anaesthetics, Psychiatry, Emergency Department, OPD’s
Social Scene:
- Everyone at HH is really very kind and it is evident that a lot of trouble goes into recognizing special days such as birthdays, baby showers, etc. There is also a yearly Intern breakfast (where the interns provides treats for all the seniors) and an End of the year function.
- Felt like as comserves we intruded at the hospital and was never really part of the team. We were made to work in EC and Covid and was expected to cover and do anaestethics after hours without having being trained during the day.
- Some planned social events during the year such as Intern breakfast or End of year function, with smaller improptu gatherings for birthdays/ maternity leave/ retirements, etc. No real organised activities outside the hospital in my year.
Additional Comments:
- You will work hard, but will have the experience to show for it. And you’ll definitely have a few laughs along the way! There are much worse place to be doing your Com Serve!
- Highly recommended!
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