Rural Allowance: No
Doctors Quarters:
- You can consider it if you want to save money. But very poor standard of living. Very small.
- Did not stay in DQ
- Small room with balcony and a sink. One male and female bathroom per floor (two in total). No cooking facilities. Your room is your bedroom, living room and kitchen.
Fair condition. Visitors allowed. - Old, one room per occupant, no kitchen, shared bathroom.
- Avoid if possible.
- Very few “Doctor’s Rooms” which are nice, the remainder of the interns will stay at the Nursing College which is not well maintained. You can make it work if you need to… But I’d rather rent – it’s Durban so you won’t be short of options.
Academics:
- Good supervision and learning opportunities, not always tutorials but lots of hands on experience
- It is what you make it. Find those who like to teach and make the most of it.
- Every rotation has some academic teaching in place that interns are also required to attend. Some rotations (internal med, O&G, anaesthetics, psychiatry) also encourage intern presentations of cases or topics assigned by the consultant. Paediatrics tuns an ETAT course at the start of the rotation. As the hospital is linked with UKZN there’s teaching rounds for students and reg academic grand rounds as well in some departments.
- Covid has affected the academics. Normally there would be morning meetings as the main source of teachable moments, but that is mostly curbed during peak Covid times. Not much academics on wards rounds.
- Tutorials in Paeds, Gynae & Fam med mostly. Surgery & Internal Medicine a lot of pressure with paperwork, gruesome meetings, sometimes little help on call (Surgery).
- Some rotations offer more than others but most learning would have had to be done at university.
- You get taught well in Paeds, Surgery and O&G in first year. Internal Medicine not at all by comparison. I believe the teaching was even better when COVID limitations were less of an issue
2nd Year – Anesthetics and Psychiatry made an effort to teach, the Anesthetics department is absolutely top class. Orthos you made your own learning, if you asked the MOs and Regs were very willing to teach. Family Medicine at St Mary’s is challenging.
Supervision:
- Good supervision. Assistance always provided when needed
- There is always medical officer and registrar supervision. Interns are always expected to be supervised
- Generally the supervision is adequate however in the busier rotations there can be “too much supervision” and you’re basically a phlebotomist. But if you’re keen to do things yourself, you will be granted the opportunity with adequate supervision
- Good supervision in Paeds, Psych.
Fam Med Casualty – it’s you and another intern seeing P1 patients ( with no prior training and minimal supervision) the seniors only come when there’s a resus.Obs-fairly good supervision. If the senior is scrubbed, the experienced midwives are usually helpful. - You will never be left to manage completely alone. There is always cover but not too much.
- You’re never in a situation where if you need advice or guidance you can’t get it (less so for St Marys time). The teaching may not always be the best but you almost never feel stranded.
Clinical Exposure:
- You will do a lot of firsts here! First C/S, CVP, ICD, extensive wound suturing. And then you will do a lot of procedures and gain confidence in managing every form of patient from a neonatal resus to a geriatric with a MI. Clinical exposure is definitely a highlight of RKK internship.
- Generally good. Busy hospital
- Ample patients to practise on ;
Internal Med : overflowing. Can be doing LPs and Pleural taps in your sleep by the 2nd week.Surgery – lots of exposure. Gets comfortable with doing proctoscope.Obs-lots of patients. Good supervision from experienced midwives. - You will get enough clinical exposure.
- Got to see a wide variety of cases in every discipline (some cases would get referred pretty early to Albert though – especially Neurosurg cases).
Social Scene:
- There isn’t a designated program as such. Some departments organize a weekly lunch. But you work closely with other interns and are in a big city so there’s a lot of social activities that can be arranged. It depends on the individual.
- You’re in Durban. It’s a Metro, make a plan.
- Located in a township. Not the safest, incidents of hijacking.Different culture ; hindu temples, idols on the roadside.There’s a mall close by.
- Depends what you. Durban lifestyle is great.
- COVID put a damper on social life to say the least, but Durban’s got an active night life and plenty to do
Additional Comments:
- Definitely sets up a good foundation for your clinical work experience for years ahead. You’ll work hard but it makes every year thereafter much easier.
-
- If you can survive Khans, you can survive anywhere.2. Try not to internalize the treatment you get from the nurses. Some can be unpleasant in the beginning.3. Tips for surviving Internal Med ;
-Brush up on your CPR, it will come in handy on call .
-Sometimes you get called for a resus ( at night) & you’re the only one there. Alert your senior and do what you can. Don’t forget to document.
-If you have never done the procedure, do not be afraid to say so.
– I had a challenging consultant (and you’re told to just suck it up because that’s how he is), keep a journal of the incidents & who was present when what happened. Decide of you want to report it, I did and things got better. Know the channel of complaints from day 1.
– Try to do the handoves, document the reason for the delays ie busy call. Because if something goes wrong, they’ll come for you in a meeting.We were a short staffed group, maybe that affected my experience.
- If you can survive Khans, you can survive anywhere.2. Try not to internalize the treatment you get from the nurses. Some can be unpleasant in the beginning.3. Tips for surviving Internal Med ;
- Not as bad as people make it out to be.
- It’s known as “Durban Bara” for a reason, you’ll work very hard in some departments and there’s a ton of resource and staffing issues (although it’s a far smaller hospital than Bara). 2nd Years are currently doing calls in first year departments since they’re so short staffed.
Overall I’d still choose RKKH again, come in with the expectation to work and you’ll find there’ll be plenty of days that pleasantly surprise you. Many of the departments have great seniors that you’ll enjoy working with (it’s much much better than the rumours from previous years) – Paeds and a small part of Internal Med remains toxic unfortunately.
Internal Medicine may have been traumatic for some due to COVID.
Internship is tough basically everywhere and the public health system is limping along, so many of the issues are shared amongst all public hospitals. Learn early that the shortcoming of the system are not your own.
Each department has it’s own post-call time, be assertive about people respecting it and do what you can to help your colleagues leave at that time too. If you look out for each other it’s a far more manageable experience.
Please contribute to this conversation by replying to this topic.