adelaidemedblog

Well, rural week was a blast. Second year med students at Adelaide are given the opportunity (well, made to) during their year to spend one “week” in a rural area, either gaining clinical experience in a rural setting, or cultural experience in an indigenous setting. Given the choice, I decided to take the clinical option. Competition for particular places is tough with my selected location - Port Lincoln - being the most overbooked initially. The lucky half of the applicants for this location and time (early is best!) went last week.

Port Lincoln is a small town of about… fourteen thousand people and five medical students. I’m pretty sure the main industries are related to it being a port, the most noticeable feature being large wheat silos on the seaside. It also has some tuna farms apparently, though I didn’t really notice them. It has a small number (i think it was three) main healthcare facilities, one being the hospital, one being a GP clinic, and the other or others being less important to me due to my not actually knowing about them anymore.

We were shown around the place for the first day, being introduced to the Port Lincoln team of the Spencer Gulf Rural Health School, having lunch and playing with the hospital’s ECG machine (each of us has a printout of their own). Later we were given a tute on cardiovascular physiology by one of the visiting doctors. Dinner was at a pub (this became a trend) where we got to meet more of the resident GPs over a buffet of pizza and lemon-lime bitters. We retired to a motel on the outskirts of the town.

Each day from then on we were given an attachment with either a rural GP at the clinic or one of several different places - either in the treatment room in the clinic, with a radiographer, or, the most popular, in surgery. Being placed with two GP’s initially was rewarding - since both also had subspecialties in obstetrics. Half of the patients I saw with the GP’s were pregnant mothers and recently postnatal mothers bringing in their babies. Naturally, while the doctor was examining the mothers, i got to hold the baby. For the pregnant mothers there was the Doppler - a handheld ultrasound thing - which allowed us to detect placental and foetal heartbeats. And palpation for the baby in utero. awwwwww… *sighs*.

I decided on the third day to forego going to radiology to instead go to surgery. All colonoscopies. It came to me that though surgery could be really intense, somehow it can also be taken for granted and be a bit drab too. I did take it on the provision that I wouldn’t miss the opportunity later that day to see a caesarean section. Which was well worth it. I stood in the room with another medical student and the GP that I had followed the first day and we watched him slowly cut away the layers of tissue and reach inside and pull the baby out. a beautiful baby boy, coloured slightly purple, eyes closed, silent and unmoving, but alive and well. It was taken to a different room while mum was being stitched (and stapled…) up. Dad carried the baby around to us after it came back from the other room. Its eyes were open and staring endlessly into mine.

I came back from rural week on the Friday. It was an intense week of 7am wakeups and 3am sleeps. I am thankful for the experience, though it took a lot of energy. I spent all of the remaining week of the holidays catching up on sleep.

Thanks must go to SGRHS and our coordinators, who ferried us everywhere and showed us everything.