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Published: January 27th 2009
Timaru Hospital
A picture heading east down Queen Street toward the hospital, and, at the end of the street, the South Pacific Ocean.So here I am, our third weekend here in T-town, and I am in the latter end of a 67 hour shift of being on call. I only got called in twice, mid Saturday and mid Sunday morning for two cases each. I am on call for OB, but no epidurals were necessary, and I only got a couple other calls, so not so bad, methinks.
Some of you are interested in the practice here. Initially, I was a bit surprized at how hard I was working. Perhaps that was because I had backed off to 3/4 time back home, and I am working a bit more than that. I suspect that as I get more used to the system and less stressed, I won't feel like I am working so hard. I began my job the first day on the job, with a "seezer" (c-section) in the "theater" on Monday morning. We use 0.5% "heavy" or "plain" bupivicaine for our spinals, plus spinal morphine for the seezer and all ortho.
I have been surprised at the acuity of the patients. The patient base is older than I am used to, but of very hardy stock. I appreciate their
Timaru Assembly of God
Went to church this morning, got paged for a case about 15 minutes in, listened to the message and drove the 5 minutes to the hospital. philosophy of life. Many are current or ex farmers or somehow involved in fishing, farming (sheep, dairy, produce) production or export in some way. The Port of Timaru has one of the largest warehouses in the world for dairy products for export. The conversion from sheeping to milking a few years ago with the availability of irrigation water (now coming into short supply) spurred the conversion.
The staff and surgeons are all very nice and very knowledgeable, pleasant to work with. I feel like other than the occasional language burble, things are good. The real stars for me are the anesthesia techs. Most other specialties get a week or so orientation to NZ medicine in Christchurch or Dunedin. We anaesthetists get none of that (we're too tough?), we get thrown directly into the fray. Actually, this is possible due to the presence of the techs. They know where things are, set things up, even do some of the stuff for us. Without them, it would be nearly impossible to be pressed into service so quickly. I am not sure how their job description compares to those in the US. I have one whenever am in the theatre, the exception
being on L&D when doing a labor epidural where the nurse midwives help us. Seezers are done in the theatre.
My house is just across the Botanical Gardens (a feature in any town here of adequate size...very British...it's like a hilly and foliaged and flowered Wash Park) from the Hospital, perhaps a 5 minute walk. No need to take in-house call, or to leave early to fight traffic.
Timaru has a number of ex-patriates of a number of countries who have moved here. A common theme is that this is a great and safe place to raise a family...not without problems, but on a much smaller level than even many other places in NZ, and certainly than the US, UK, etc. A down side is the slide in the NZ dollar, down from 0.70 to 0.52 at latest report. Good for tourists bringing US $ in, bad for those of us paid in NZ $. Timaru is also centrally located to a lot of the best the South Island has to offer.
Anyway, enough for now. By the way, the temperature only got into the mid-60's today, a big drop from the 90 degree weather of the
Sliding Windows
Interesting design allows windows to be moved to the side on days like today (nearly 90 or 31 for you Celcius fans. weekend...it's a cold wind that blows...from the south.
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Sara Lokey
non-member comment
Hello!
Hello Jack and Nahid! Love reading your updates.