Internship Reviews

Rural allowance: No

Doctors Quarters:

• It has the basics. Not at all modern, but convenient.
• Res room like with those green casino carpet floors. En suite bathroom which is in variable condition depending on the unit you get (The bath tub is heavily discolored in some). There is a bath tub with shower head, you may have to fit in your own shower curtain rail (recommend using the portable ones from builders warehouse). Upstairs there is a basic kitchen with stove. Bigger two roomed units are available on the 5th floor. Cost is 900/month. Honestly its not great but provides the bare essentials – its very convenient especially for calls at Universitas.
• Very cheap
• Old fashioned but clean and safe. And extremely convenient
• “Really depends on the type of complex you get.
  A: is basically a bachelor (a room that functions as your sitting are and bedroom )but big enough to have a double bed and 2 sets of couches there’s small kitchen and bathroom attached. B: this is two floors, but the bedroom area is still the same area as sitting area
  The kitchen is a little bigger and there’s space for a small dining area or other facilities. C: is the biggest, it’s 3 stories.Each story for bedroom, sitting area and kitchen. Overall the DQ are in central and safe area.
  It’s attached to universitas so you can basically walk to the hospital when you’re rotating there. And usually there’s a great sense of community and lots of activities
  Like roof top braais or get together “.
• An absolute steal – monthly costs of about R900 with wate and electricity included! Very conveniently placed as it is on site to Universitas Hospital making calls from home possible. 10-20 Minute drive to any of the other health care facilities that you will be working at. Nearby shopping centers and entertainment establishments. Great sense of community as most interns stay here so there is ample opportunity for social interactions. All necessary amenities with good bones – some of the units needs some TLC in terms of modernising the aesthetics but everything is in working order.
• Building with flats, very old school. But some doctors revamp their place with new floors, paint the walls etc to make it better. Safe area to live in.
• Old building, fills up quick.
• Really depends on your own preference.Definitely not a 5 star hotel, but has all the basics. It’s literally on the grounds of Universitas Hosp and also not too far from the other hospitals. A very cheap R900 a month for the past age, it seems, and still includes water, electricity, covered parking etc. Manager also very friendly and helpful (at least when we were there). The biggest benefit, however, is the direct connection to Universitas Hospital, which makes Universitas calls (all from home) just that much more manageable. (To note for the ladies, maybe: the corridor kept me on my toes and my eyes watchful, especially in the dark hours of the night.)
  A few drawbacks from our time, though: a visitor’s car had unfortunately been stolen once, but I guess that can happen anywhere. The facility is also quite old and had obviously seen better days (an olympic size swimming pool now supports a healthy growth of water plants).If you are someone who needs a bit of nature after a long day’s work and would appreciate a lush neighbourhood to go for a jog, this might be a challenge. I guess you might even try to sneak a sleeping spot from a colleague who lives in the DQs for those on-call nights, but otherwise stay somewhere else in the city?”

Academics:

• Department dependant. Very little teaching on rounds. Weekly lectures in Paeds, internal and fam med
• Weekly academics in most departments, along with academics rounds for the students ( it interns learn on it too)
• Variable within the departments: Internal medicine – average, Surgery – poor, Obs and Gynae – average, Psychiatry – excellent, Ortho – poor, Paeds – poor, Anesthetics – excellent, family medicine – average
• In Universitas, you’ll get lots of academics
• This depends on your interest and the department
  Interns are usually there to facilitate work that needs to be done
  But if you do show interest they are willing to teach. Patient load isn’t as hectic as Gauteng so there’s time to read around interesting patients. There’s also a lot of opportunities to do hands on work like putting in drains or cvps. And get all your c/s. The district hospital is national is also great it’s where you rotate during your family medicine rotation and you manage your own ward and work in casualty like a senior and can ask for help when stuck
• Depends on the department that you are rotating through but almost all will have weekly M&Ms and academic presentations. If you show that you are keen the registrars will put extra effort into teaching and mentoring you.
• Most rotations you will get academic exposure. All of them will give you lectures.
• As with all things in life, it is what you make of it and I would definitely advise some reading/revision on your own before heading into a new rotation. Many of the consultants work in a teaching hospital for a reason and would love to answer well-informed questions if you did your part by knowing the basics. Student teaching rounds definitely also have benefits for Interns. Most departments have some sort of teaching once a week, whether it is for Interns specifically or something more general that the Regs/Students also attend. Teaching is definitely department-dependent and also very dependent on how well a department is functioning at the time of your rotation, so bear in mind that one person’s experience might differ quite drastically from someone else’s depending on when they rotated where.

Supervision:

• Always available
• Ranges between excellent to minimal depending on departments
• There is always someone you can ask for help
• You will always have a senior on site with you
• Very well, in all rotations.
• You will always work with an MO or (in most cases) a registrar, albeit sometimes a junior reg. Plenty of opportunity to get hands-on experience, yet, you never have to do anything that you are uncomfortable with.

Clinical Exposure:

• Limited clinical exposure secondary to covid And teriary hospital. However more hands on experience during family medicine

• Tertiary hospital allows a lot of exposure due to all surrounding areas major cases coming to BFN.

• Paediatrics
  You get to manage your own patients in NICU and in general paeds with reg and consultant cover.
  You also get pre and post call which is amazing.
  Aneasth you can actually get time to run your own theatre and do your own premeds but this really depends on how the department is at the time.
  We usually got to run simple theatres like urology.
  Calls are in the emergency and obs and gynae theatre.
  Internal medicine here you basically work with the reg at Pelonomi which is where you’ll do most of your general medicine time.
  You will rotate through to universitas which is the quaternary hospital so you’ll be in a spec.
  There’s clinical haematology rotation available as well.
  Surgery same as internal medicine in that most of general medicine is at Pelonomi
  At universitas you will have exposure to vascular surgery, breast and neck surgery and hepatobillary and paeds surgery.
  You are expected to be in theatre, but it’s unlikely you’ll be cutting at universitas
  At Pelonomi you might be able to do appendectomies.
  Ortho here you’re mainly taking ij the admission and putting casts on patients your reg will be in theatre mostly.
  You can call if you’re unsure how to do a cast or set the patient.
  Also exposure to paeds Ortho.
  Psych very chilled.
  Calls are from home only come out if your reg calls to see an acute psych that’s being admitted to psych and the reg will be there too.
  Good exposure to a variety of pathology.
  They sit and teach as well during the rounds.
  Early days.
  Family medicine for us was only 4 months.
  We worked at national hospital.
  Managed your own wards with consultant rounds twice a week.
  Worked in casualty as a senior.
  Then did outreach to local clinics.

• Ample patient load but very manageable. You will see a wide variety of cases and be expected to clerk, examine and investigate the patients and make a management plan which will always be discussed and overseen by a senior.

• I felt this was very good and I felt well-prepared and comfortable moving into my Com Serve year. You deal with a very large range of patients, from district level cases to tertiary/quaternary cases. You’ll see enough patients on your own to get comfortable with making your own diagnoses, have the opportunity of doing many procedures (pleural/ascites taps, LPs, ICDs, obviously your caesers and even central lines or bone marrows) and get well-versed in the management of many differet patients.

Social Scene:

• As social as Bloem can be!
• You drive 3 hours away to JHB for the social scene.
• You need to put yourself out there but usually Bloem people are very friendly
• Learn to sokkie! There is a rich culture of Braai&Brandy with a very welcoming community of young professionals. Weekends off can be spent visiting historic landmarks, having decadent dinners and exploring the outdoors. Also centrally placed in SA so easy to travel for recreational weekends away to JHB/Clarens/DBN/CPT.
• It depends on your intern group as well as the friends you have made.
• I am not a city-person myself and therefore enjoyed the easy step into nature with a number of venues in the area that host outdoor markets, music shows, great restaurants, etc. Bloem is large enough to be called a city, but definitely has a small-town feel and lovely people. The large number of interns always assigned to Bloem also really help to make new friends.

Additional Comments:

• Attitude determines how you perceive and learn from internship 
• Apart from a few sour rotations it was quite manageable, a completely fine choice compared to the others which were available in the second round.
• “A few last thoughts:
  – You will work hard and will call a lot. You will also rarely be let home first thing in the morning after a call and will mostly have some sort of responsibility to take care of first. Yet, most call-free afternoons should not hold you in hospital later than about 4pm. You might even get out earlier than that on a number of occasions – a luxury you might not find everywhere else.
  – Work as a team! There will be many of you doing a rotation at the same time – enough to get all the jobs done and everyone home at a respectable time. Really make the most of this and support the post-call guys as best you can. The favour will be returned!
  – I speak under correction, but Bloem is unique in the sense that you work in a number of different hospitals, which allow you exposure to all the different levels of health care in SA’s public health system. You rotate through National Hospital (a primary level hospital), Pelonomi (which calls itself tertiary, but maybe functions more on a secondary level) and Universitas, the town’s tertiary/quaternary hospital. In addition, there is a designated Psychiatric Hospital, FSPC, and you might even get the privilege of rotating through 3-Mil, Bloem’s military hospital, in one or two rotations.”
• Not as bad as it seems.