Rural Allowance: No
Doctors Quarters:
- Maintenance depends on previous interns, so some were in good condition, others not. Safety is the only concern.
- Depends who lived there before you. Some have fixed up a few issues, and some have left it as it. Occasionally days without hot water.
- “There are 2 blocks (A and B)
The one is rooms with a shared kitchen and bathrooms. This is more like a hostel or dormetary and is not always in use.
The other is made up of apartments with 2 rooms, a bathroom and kitchen. They generally allocate 1 intern to each apartment so there is one bedroom, a lounge and each intern has their own bathroom and small kitchen. There are some rooms with 3 rooms which are generally given to couples.
The building itself is very old but most interns have renovated or updated the inside of the DQ.
It’s mostly okay, rent is R1000 pm with water and electricity at around R25 per month. Relatively safe although there have been instances of petty theft etc. - There are two blocks. Block A is only a single room and bathroom with communal kitchen, which is not in a functional condition. Block B has quarters with 2 or 3 bedrooms, a small kitchen and bathroom. The condition of the apartment mainly depends on who lived there before you. In general, not a bad option if you want to live close to work and save a lot on rent.”
Academics:
- Tertiary hospital
- Focuses more on teaching registrars. You can be as involved as you want
- Brilliant senior support, tutorials, and hands on experience. Still an intern, so expect lots of admin too. Intern coordinators are very involved, and check in. Some rotations are better than others.
- Very dependant on department but for the most part quite academic. Prior to covid interns were expected at academic meetings however post covid this has been more lax with academic meetings being done online. O&G has ESMOE which is compulsory. The ANLS is done during paeds for the neonatal rotations and the hospital sponsors half of the cost of the course and gives you special leave days to do it.
- Being an academic hospital, there are always teaching rounds happening. Occasionally you don’t join them because you’re doing other work. Because students from 3rd year on attend the rounds, the teaching is often as a very basic level, and when students aren’t present (just consultants, regs, MOs and interns), the teaching is often above your head. Overall, it is a good place to consolidate knowledge and learn good, evidence-based practice.
- This depends a lot on which registrars you end up working with and how keen you are to learn, but most departments have a formal academic session once a week. Since there’s also students rotating, you learn a lot from registrars who are teaching the students as well. You also have to teach students a lot. Great if you want to get your name on a research paper or two as well since there is a lot of research going on.
- Teaching ward rounds are the order of the day.
Supervision:
- Always supervised. Pro, but also at the expense of building confidence in independence
- Always on with a senior or a team. They are expected to review most of your work, and will be called out if they don’t. Always a phone call away.
- Supervision is pretty much always available and is of a high quality, mostly from registrars. Even if the registrars are not with you they are generally easily available via cell phone.
- You are never on call alone and can always contact someone for help. The exception is surgery when your reg is in theatre, although you can call any other reg in the hospital to help with a resusc. Regs are keen to teach interns procedures and if you’re not comfortable doing something alone, there is always someone who will help you.
- Depends on your registrar once again. There is always someone to ask though and you are never completely alone. Family medicine when you are placed at district hospitals/clinics also teach you independence and gives you a lot of confidence.
- Supervision varies per department. Often alone during surgical calls, but great learning opportunities.
Clinical Exposure:
- You will see a large variety of the common conditions you need knowledge on, and you will see more advanced cases too, as it is a tertiary hospital. Some procedures/theatre cases will be taken by the seniors, but if you show interest, you will find the opportunity.
- “Depends on the department. Great exposure in surgery with opportunities to do CVPs, A lines and minor surgeries such as AKAs if you show iniative. Paeds exposure was fantastic, you will end up being very competent at neonatal resus especially.
O&G was not a very exposure (although this was affected by covid so I cannot speak for non covid times). Very difficult to get cutting time for C sections.
Family medicine was fantastic for exposure, you are expected to function independently and manage patients (including red triage patients). Plenty of opportunities to do ICDs, resuses, ultrasounds etc.
Anaesthetics was a good experience although at times difficult as you need to compete with students to get procedures.
Difficult to comment on internal med as it was done during the first covid wave.
Orthopedics was not a good experience, mostly involved doing ward work with little actual orthopedic experience. - A lot of paperwork and I have definitely clerked fewer patients than my friends at peripheral hospitals, but I still think we get adequate clinical exposure. Being a tertiary hospital, we don’t necessarily see common conditions commonly (except during family med) so I’m not sure if we will be adequately prepared for comm serv and beyond.
- You see a lot of specialised conditions. Not a lot of procedural exposure (depending on the registrars you are with), but especially in surgery and orthopaedics. Internal medicine and O&G you still get to do a lot of procedures. You get exposed to most clinical conditions and more.
- Not optimal in tertiary setting.
Social Scene:
- Everyone keeps to themselves. Most people who get CT posts had good reasons to stay in ct, ie have family. So it reflects in terms of the social aspect
- I stayed in City Bowl and mingled with other people to get a social scene.
- Large intern base, with many that are not local. Many social Whatsapp groups for outings, and braais. DQs are very social.
- Difficult to comment on as my first year was done during covid and the hard lock down.
- Lots of interns, but little opportunity to socialise with interns in other rotations. In some rotations, the hierarchy between interns, MOs and regs isn’t as prominent, but even then, you won’t really socialise with your seniors outside of work.
- Depends on the group you are placed in, but you spend a lot of time together and if your group put in some effort to socialize, it’s really good for moral.
- Non-existent.
Additional Comments:
- Can’t comment on psychiatry as I haven’t completed it yet.
- You can probably get whatever you want from Tygerberg. If you want a chilled internship where you just do paperwork and take blood, you can do that. If you want to do CVPs and ICDs all the time, you can do that too. The only thing you won’t get much of is cutting time in theatre.
- Not a bad place to do internship – you work super hard, learn a lot and will cry when you have to leave.
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