mayoraasei | day at westmead

There must be some hidden rule, if not in the faculty, then at our clinical school, that says "thou shalt be organised, if not, thou shalt be extremely disorganised".

Usually days and activities are fairly well-constructed, within reason obviously, since there's always the registrar who was called off to an emergency or the GP who was stuck in traffic (yes, see the difference =P)

But whenever our clinical school organises anything with another clinical school, something on the communication wire collapses. Last year they told us to all go all the way from bloody CONCORD (a hole) to RPA in the city, for a lecture that was scheduled for the next day and clashed with all of our timetables.

Today we were scheduled for a paediatrics session in Westmead. The wealth of info we received was a photo of the front desk, a map that didn't tell us where we were supposed to end up, and a time. Amazingly most of us got there on time, although our tutor was late, which probably wasn't her fault.

And then we sat down and she said, "So, what are you planning to get out of today?" We looked at her with a sinking feeling and said, "Er...that's what we want to know."

So while I spent more than 3 hours in total travelling, I had only 2 hours at the hospital, only one hour of which we spent with our tutor, and only half that time we spent with a patient (an 8-month-old whose default disposition was to blow raspberries at anyone she fixed her eyes upon).

It was the most wasted activity in the course to date. Apart from that day we went all the way to RPA for nothing. But at least I had lunch that day.