Rural Allowance: Yes
Doctors Quarters:
- Just make sure it’s in a safe part of town not in Shelly Beach.
- Private leased houses by DoH.
- “Some of the DQs are decent. Some are really bad. Beginning of the internship experience the females were placed in the really bad one. Run down. Poor security. Broken furniture.
Would recommend private accommodation if placed in one of those “
Academics:
- Very few departments have an academic programme.
- Many departments have no structured teaching programme. It’s up to you how much you want to learn.
Supervision:
- There’s ALWAYS a senior. It’s the quality of supervision that leaves much to be desired.
- Supervision is the one good thing. You’ll hardly ever feel alone. There were almost always seniors.
Clinical Exposure:
- It’s a district hospital so you get to see a bit of everything. You see many of the common conditions so you become more comfortable through the exposure.
Social Scene:
- Not much to do in the area. And no real coordinated social gatherings from the hospital.
Additional Comments:
- I really enjoyed it, a good balance between clinical and academics. In retrospect, they were also quite reasonable with overtime etc…
- I believe this placement is great for 2 reasons:
1 – Rural pay
2 – the hospital isn’t overwhelmingly busy in a lot of the departments (maybe just O+G and Gen surg can get really hectic – but that’s pretty much the case everywhere😅)
But otherwise for teaching and standard of living, I wouldn’t necessarily put it as my first choice if I could go back and redo my application process.
Depends on what you’re looking to get from your training.
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