University of Tasmania Medical School

Today was my last shift - and I didn't do too much work: many of the students, interns, residents, and registrar grabbed me for performance evaluations. Not my favorite thing - i'm not good at evaluating folks' strengths and weaknesses and I'm terrible at being critical.

But, I talked with some of the students and learned a bit about the med school: 5 year school, straight out of secondary education for most. 1st 3 years are all preclinical and in Hobart at the main University Campus. Then 2 years of clinical rotations spread out to Burnie (small hospital in a city of under 30,000), Launceston, and Hobart. By reputation: Burnie has good teaching programs but a small hospital with limited patients. Living is cheap, so those on low budgets like going there. Hobart - good to stay near family, big hospital with all the specialties and lots of patient material, but poor teaching. YOYO approach - not even much in the line of lectures, supposedly. And here's the shocker: Launceston is the place to go for good teaching: plenty of lectures and programs, and REgistrars and consultants who are willing to sit down and go through patient presentations. Hmmmm!

Got home from work, and suddenly my phone rang with the ER number on it! AAAGHHHH - did I forget that I was on call? Was there a disaster and they needed more help? Turns out that some of the nurses didn't realize that I had just finished my last shift - and called - at midnight, to say goodby. Good on ya, mates.

Talked a bit with one of the Reg's about medical care in India - his home. Public hospitals and care is apparently abysmal, crowded, overworked, poor quality. And, an impenetrable barrier between private and public. The big companies all provide insurance for the employees, and the private hospitals are by his account, comparable to the more developed world - big, clean, well equipped with all the latest - and partly supported by medical tourism including from the US. His mother had a syncopal episode (fainted) last month and got a CT, MRI, and echocardiogram for $600 and got her permanent pacemaker for $6000. I believe that I could see a syncope patient at the University and the cost of cab fair to DIA, plus round trip flights, plus all that stuff would be about 1/3 of the cost to get it done at the U.

OK, probably no more medical stuff. Off to the Great Barrier Reef and mountain biking in Queensland.