Community Service Reviews

CMSA Accreditations: None

Rural Allowance: Yes

Doctors Quarters:

• No comments yet.

Academics:

• Very poor academically. Even when attempting to get teaching to happen, no one was interested.

Supervision:

• You are on your own, not much help. Not much guidance.

Clinical Exposure:

• You see and do everything, but mostly get shafted to do what others don’t want to do.

Departments worked in:

• Internal Medicine, Surgery, Orthopaedics, Paediatrics, Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Anaesthetics, Psychiatry, ARV clinic, Emergency Department, OPD’s – “You can cut c sections if you want to.
  You mostly will do your overtime in casualty
  The wards are general wards and you see patients from all specialities
  The referral hospital is amazing for some departments (surgery, orthopaedics) and terrible for others (Internal medicine and psychiatry will never accept patients if you speak to the medical officers, call the consultants directly)”

Social Scene:

• Felt very unwelcoming. Felt like an outsider. Not easy to make friends.

Additional Comments:

• “there is onsite accommodation, its average but there is no where else to stay
  ITS FAR AND IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE- 1 hour, 20 mins from a shopping centre
  There is a petrol station, post office and spaza shop at the hospital, be prepared to drive for just a chocolate.
  You only work about 2-3 weekends a year- great plus
  Days can be short depending on bed status
  enough time to study for primaries
  You can organise to go to the tertiary hospital to spend some time in a speciality- anaesthesia, orthopaedics for more exposure.
  Your car will have punctures- the roads can get quite bad, know how to change a tyre
  Durban is 4 hrs away, Richards bay 2 hrs away for groceries. “