Working at King's College Hospital

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Working at King's College Hospital

My time at King's College Hospital has been full of surprises. Now that it is nearly over, I can safely conclude that it is not what I expected --- though not necessarily for the worse.

What I Expected
King's College Hospital is a very busy hospital. As I knew, King's trains more medical professionals than anywhere else in Europe, thus it was no surprise when there was nearly one junior doctor per patient for the first few days until things settled down a bit. There were literally more doctors than nurses and technicians combined!

Another thing I expected was multidisciplinary ward rounds. That means that it is more than just the doctors who "round" on the patients every morning (that is, go and see them each individually and discuss their care). Multidisciplinary teams have physical therapy, nurses, nutritionists, and sometimes other specialists present during ward rounds so that the patient can be discussed as a whole and every issue can be addressed by all parties. This is how DeVos Children's Hospital in Grand Rapids operates, so I expected King's to do something similar. They did!

I also expected King's College Hospital to be more than just a children's hospital, and of course it was. I do not believe there are any dedicated children's hospitals in London but rather large sections of certain hospitals that are dedicated to pediatrics. King's College Hospital is very busy in all medical fields.

What I Did NOT Expect
It's small! I do not believe it is any larger than the hospitals in Muskegon, like Mercy or Hackley, and it is certainly not larger than Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids. I expected a London hospital to be huge and bustling, but instead... it's small and bustling! They definitely make use of every square foot (or square meter, if you are European).

The doctors-in-training do lots of menial tasks! I could not believe my eyes. I am talking about doctors several years out of medical school: drawing their own blood (ew!), hand-writing a list of all prescriptions and doses given (what?!), inserting IV lines (no way!), and hand-delivering their samples to the lab (woah...). And more. To be completely honest, I think any American doctor would wrinkle his nose at such expectations.

America's policy is that a task is generally completed by minimally qualified personnel. That may sound bad at first, but it is a very good thing. It means that nurses or techs draw blood and put in IV lines because they are completely qualified and capable --- and better at it than the doctors! It also means that an orderly collects the sample and brings it down to the lab. There's no reason to have a nurse or doctor running errands like that. But that's how it works in King's College Hospital. NO THANK YOU!

Another thing I did not expect was how many sick babies there are and how little interaction I was able to have with the patients. The children here are brought from all around England for the best care, thus only the sickest kids make it there. I was expecting to be able to talk with the kids and entertain them with my funny accent, but the majority of them were infants or otherwise incapable of much conversation.

Combine this with the fact that many of the children stay for weeks at a time (yes, weeks!), the interactions are even less. While rounding in the morning, many of the discussions are in short-hand because everyone is so familiar with the case that only updates need to be given, and almost all of the conversation happens with the parents. That was kind of disappointing.


Overall, it has been a very good experience, and I have learned a lot from some of the greatest minds in English medicine. I will have a bit more to write about it later this week, so stay tuned!

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[anonymous]

/stays tuned /changechannel [target=5] /zzzz