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Published: September 16th 2010
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International Study at King's College London
The long awaited post of Ben's international studies is here at last! (
applause) There is so very much to write, so be prepared: I will likely be forced to write additional entries to spaciously honor the important events and knowledge gained here. This post will refer to the beginning and basics of my medical studies in London. Reflections on the British healthcare system will require its own entry at a later date.
I arrived at King's College London's Guy Campus approximately fourty-five minutes late of the beginning of my orientation. Oops. There is a fair explanation which involves a very, very, very obvious route between the tube station and the target building that mysteriously resulted in a very, very, very long detour around downtown London. It was only a hundred yards from station to campus, but it took us more than half an hour!
Things improved from there. I was one of about ten non-King's students being placed for a 4-week elective that day. Most of them were from other medical schools in the UK, two were from Pakistan, and one was from somewhere in Asia. I do not know; I did
not ask. I quickly became Mr. Popular as everyone wanted to speak to
the American.
An Irish student (who, for the record, did not sound Irish; again, I did not ask) asked what elective I was given. I told her pediatrics, which was my first choice among three, the other two being neurology or general medicine. Suddenly, both Pakistani students gaze at me enviously:
both of their first choices for elective were pediatrics.
Having been given priority placement over other students was quite an honor. King's College is one of the top universities in the world, recently ranked among the top twenty-five universities in the world with the likes of Harvard, Yale, and Oxford. King's College receives a great deal of elective applications; apparently, I was competing for positions not only internationally but against all UK medical students as well. It was thus quite an honor to know I got my first choice.
I then went to meet my medical advisor at King's College Hospital which entailed a long bus ride through London between the campuses. When I arrived, I had to ask several hospital staff to find the right place, and even when I got there,
the man behind the desk blinked at me in surprise and said, "Well, you're really early!"
A short chase then begun to locate my advisor, Dr. Broughton and find out what was going on. As it turns out, the kind doctor was not informed of my imminent arrival and had nothing for me to do that day. He arranged for me to come to the induction of the new doctors working at the hospital, basically the new interns and residents as we would call them in the US, not quite on their own yet but no longer in medical school. The induction was basically a very long orientation process with a great deal of boring information that held precious little relevance to me. Wake up, Ben. Wake up! Zzz, what?
From then, my medical journey was plotted to include one-week tours of some of the "wards" that King's College Hospital Department of Child Health had to offer. The rest of the first week would be at Toni and Guy Ward, a wing dedicated to general pediatrics. The second week would be at Lion Ward, the pediatric neurology department. After that, I would spend a week in Rays of Sunshine, the largest pediatric liver transplant service in the world (I think). The fourth and final week is yet to be determined.
Please stay tuned for more information about my time on each of these wards!
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anonymous
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American! Do you ever get called a 'Yank'? I wonder if that is just a movie thing.