I chose this place. My first choice. That was before I considered how small OopsyDaisy is. How very isolated. If you drive two minutes in any direction, you’ll be out of the town and into the wilderness (OK, kidding). But it’s probably good for my training as I’m doing SHO stuff (supposedly), not just intern work. With the EU working directive, I doubt I’d get much training now. We’re only allowed to work 48 hours per week and no oncalls. It’s ok for big hospitals, they have more doctors. But small places like this… I don’t know how it’s going to work out. Interns not affected that much. Mostly the SHOs.

I’m doing general medicine :)

For internship, we have to do six months of medicine (can be cardiology/respiratory/GI/oncology/general etc) and 6 of surgery (vascular/breast/orthopaedics/general/plastics etc). It depends on what you choose. I chose to have my six months of general medicine away in another rural hospital (more hands on stuff and not too overwhelmed). I’ll be doing vascular + general surgery and ENT in Galway later.

As a general rule, people doing medicine are more… let’s say, empathetic/nice (there are exceptions i.e horrible xray doc). Surgeons tend to want everything brief, concise/ straight to the point and fast, fast, fast (not to mention the really humongous egos in some).

If you’re wondering about med school, it used to be a 6-year programme but now, they’ve cut down to 5 years. Everything, from anatomy, physiology, biochemistry in the first few years, to microbiology (if you get someone as cool as prof C0rmican, you’ll fall in love with all the bugs and diseases there are), statistics (*gag* do not like this), medical law (zzzzzzzz… the sound of the lecturer’s voice is nice enough), pathology (autopsies, pots with body parts - cool enough. histology slide - made me have headaches), forensics (I felt like CSI people).

medicine: rotate between the above - cardio, resp, etc. Surgery: same.

And then, there are the specialties too: obs and gynae (brilliant!), paediatrics (kids are not miniature adults.. often heard), general practice - you get to stay with a GP for a few weeks, do house calls, see the village and it’s a good experience. Mine was by the sea and every evening, after ‘work’, I’d feast my eyes on the waves (and the surfers). Not to forget psychiatry which is the most relaxing rotation - strange at first, when you get a schizophrenic or a deluded patient who keeps saying that you’re an alien and that you’ve come to poison them.

Ophthalmology and ENT too.

Not too bad. OK, I’m lying. Of course I’d say it’s easy, seeing that I made it through. But it was BAD during the last few months of final year, when I realized that I haven’t been that perfect of a med student in the first few years (I tend to skip a few days now and then…).

I’m not sure how the system works in the US though…

And after this… either apply for a medical/surgical/general practice/obs and gynae/paediatrics scheme and within 8 years (if you’re brilliant), you’ll be a consultant :D

A month of holidays had magically suck quite a huge chunk of what I knew during med school.

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long dull post. :D Will post pictures when I get the chance. Or recycle old ones.