Community Service Reviews

CMSA Accreditations: None
Rural Allowance: Yes

Duration of Rotation: 12 months

Doctors Quarters:

• No comments yet.

Academics:

• There is no formal teaching. The hospital is meant to host weekly M&M and ESMOES but those rarely ever run and when they do, they are of little to no value with minimal participation and/or effort. The staff though friendly will resist any and every form of suggested changes.

Supervision:

• There’s little to no supervision. You work entirely independently from the word go. There are some seniors that are very helpful when called upon but otherwise, the practice is rushed and on autopilot. You are also left alone on most days with seniors either leaving early or just being absent.

Clinical Exposure:

• The hospital has a pretty large catchment so you see a wide variety of disease profile, it is a very old population with many patients north of 100 years old so it’s a lot of chronic diseases such as HPT, DM, OA etc. Interesting cases would be scorpion bites, attacks by livestocks and some trauma cases. You’re mostly dealing with patients who have poorly managed long-standing conditions and most of the time, the most you’re able to do is get them a OPD date in 8-16 weeks at the referral hospital.

Departments worked in:

• Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Anaesthetics, Emergency Department, OPD’s – I spent 6 months in Maternity, where I would do the daily rounds, cover labour ward and either assist or more likely do the anaesthesia when there was a C-section. Despite spending 6 months in Maternity, you don’t learn much, even if you’re actively studying. There isn’t much room for growth and the seniors always pressure you out of cutting. The other 6 months is spent in OPD, you do weekly clinic visits on Wednesdays and Fridays; this is such a tiring exercise, the hospital forces you to go alone and see anything from 90-120 patients across 3 sites on each day. The actual OPD time is pretty chilled, it starts at about 9-10 and by 2pm on most days, you’ll be done. You do casualty and ward calls. Ward calls can be so quiet that you sleep through the nights or so busy that you stay in the ward whole night. Casualty varies but usually dies down by 1-2 am with those random patients trickling in.

Social Scene:

• The hospital is quite rural, there’s nothing to do in and around the hospital. You do have a small shopping centre that has a Shoprite, MRP, local clothing stores, some fast food joint (Check out the Braai place, amazing food). The complex is mostly full most of the time. The neighbouring town has a little more to offer and is about 35-45 minutes away if you’re really hitching for a good time and PLK is roughly an hour away. I had a great group of Comm Servs (Nurses, Pharmacist etc) so we hung out a lot on site since we all lived there.

Additional Comments:

• It’s not a very busy hospital, you get a lot of time to yourself so short courses, diplomas and primaries are ideal to do during this year. Like every institutions it has its problems. If you do get placed there just go through it, mind your mental health and really work hard to not pick bad habits because there is a lot. The 12 months goes by really quickly despite it being a dead place.

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