3rd year choices...

so i've put in my preferences for my clinical school for next year. you see, years 3 and 4 are "clinically oriented" meaning that although we still have some lectures and tutorials with a few PBL sessions, for the most part all of our learning happens in the "real world" - in the hospital wards. our clinical school is where we do most of our rotations - everything except the rural rotation.

3rd and 4th year consist of five, 8-week rotations in various fields. so for example... in 3rd year, you do 8 weeks in surgery, 8 weeks in mental health, 8 weeks with a GP, 8 weeks in general/internal medicine and 8 weeks in a rural location studying (duh!) rural medicine.

my first choice for clinical school would be RBH (royal brisbane hospital) which i'm at right now but who knows. if RBH is over subscribed then i could be bumped down to my second choice (Mater Hospital), or even my third choice (Princess Alexandra Hospital). worse case scenario would be that i don't get any of my 3 choices and i get balloted out to a hospital in the 'burbs. that would suck. i'm not hating on the suburbs - but everyone knows i'm a city boy. ;) it's just that with such a placement i would have to consider commuting from where i am or even moving to avoid this commute. this could get really messy really quickly. i think i speak for the house when i say we're quite happy with our current living arrangements. i don't want to have to find another place to live next january. on that note... i was planning to write my USMLEs in late-January. but if i have to find a new pad before school starts, USMLE might have to be re-planned and pulled earlier to december (not ideal) or pushed back to sometime during the school year (also not ideal). plus, if i get shafted out of the city and end up moving... i might have to find a new church too... :(

at this point there isn't much i can do about it though. just hope and pray that i get a little lucky...

to complicate things/make things interesting... there are options/potential opportunities to do some of these rotations outside of brisbane. i'd LOVE to do these whenever/wherever possible. so for example, the surgical rotation can be done in Brunei. that's cool. the school also has an engagement - not quite a marriage ;-) with the Ochsner Health System in New Orleans which normally houses med students from Tulane University and Louisiana State University. this isn't up and running yet, but we've been told it should be by the time we're done the first 2 rotations or so. this would be sweet too. and lastly... although VERY preliminary and unfortunately unlikely to occur in time for us, it has been mentioned by the school that a relationship with NOSM (Northern Ontario School of Medicine) is in the works to let us do our rural rotation in Sudbury, Thunder Bay or the like. this would be... would be... da bomb man!!! i am keeping my fingers crossed, but i'm not holding my breath.

*****
study totals - where did these tallies go??? :)
week ending on sept 13: 16 hours.
week ending on sept 20: 20 hours.
week ending on sept 27: 16 hours.
like the canadian goose that flies south during the winter months, it is now time for me migrate out into the living room to study. ugh..,