I have spent most of the week prepping materials. We have a generously allocated office with intermittent Wi-Fi, this is quiet a luxury out here. There is even aircon (although I am loathed to turn it on when I am alone, imagining horrendous energy consumption in a city with daily blackouts). So, I spend the longest period of my life on Microsoft office; writing presentations, designing pre course assessment, spreadsheets of candidates and trying to plug the large amounts of holes in my knowledge. I am here to teach point of care ultrasound. This is the use of ultrasound by the treating doctor at the bedside with an acutely unwell…
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Meetings, greetings, and your people
Induction is much the same everywhere. There is the stuff you need to know which is some things, and they stuff they must tell you, which is a lot of things. Acceptance is a powerful thing. I accept now this is the way of the world. As it is when it comes to meeting the various great and good of a hospital. It is good to be always polite and good practice to remember everyone’s name, but it does someone become a blur of names and titles as I do my best to scribble them down in my notebook as we go. I was surprised that my little project led…
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Departures and Arrivals
Departures Airports are fundamental strange places. It is one of those things we collectively ignore as a society. They have only become stranger now I no longer take flights unless absolutely necessary(humanitarian work being only exception). It is not just the mass ignorance of how our individual impacts can build up and cause devastation. It is the way, during queues and security checks when group together everyone’s individual intelligence seems to dissolve and be replaced by collective inability to follow basic quiet clear instructions. These seems the most apt metaphor for some of the societal problems. Alas, needs must, the overland trip between Brighton and Freetown, although admittedly epic, would…
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Why I spent my day off standing in front of JP Morgan
So today, I spent my day off from working as an A&E doctor, not in any recreational pursuits or undertaking any hobbies, but feeling a bit silly standing in the cold outside of JP Morgan’s headquarters. Why would I undertake such a strange action? A tiny, seemingly pointless gesture in the grand machinations of the world. In my work as an emergency doctor I have worked in British A/E departments and in refugee camps. I see and treat the most vulnerable in our society and around the world. They arrive into my departments or tent hospitals at the worse points of their illness, at the culmination of a series of…
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Teamwork, ambition and the peak/end rule.
Visa problems, national catastrophe and local events had reduced out international team to two. I wondered what this would do to the last two weeks of my mission. It turns it would make them awesome. I had vaguely been aware that out team lead was a slightly legendary figure, casual stories of negotiating with the Taliban and facing off angry militaries for several months to advocate women’s rights. But then as you get to know a person well you start to appreciate the underlying characteristics that make for these stories. So I had been at our remote clinic a week, just feeling good again after another bout of gastro on…