So, I've been a bit lazy with the blog recently. I think fatigue is setting in, the end is in sight (10 more sleeps!) and I'm getting really impatient just to be back in the UK again. However I thought it only right to keep our loyal blog followers happy with a bit of an update on how I've been getting on in my current placement in Rheumatology.
To be honest, it's been really really difficult to get into the swing of things on this placement and that's not necessarily the Rheumatology department's fault. Firstly, as I mentioned above it's the final stage and in my head I've almost finished already. Secondly, it's only a three week attachment whereas all the others have been for four weeks. When you take into account that the French go bank holiday CRAZY in May, one of which is on a Thursday so the majority of people take the Friday after off work for a long weekend, and we basically have to take the last day off to sort out moving out of halls and leaving Nantes, this means the placement is potentially only 11 days long. Not long at all to really get a feel of a speciality and definitely not long to rush around trying to get any forms signed that you may or may not have left until the last minute. The final obstacle I've encountered is that all the students in the department have exams or re-sits coming up very soon which means they aren't around that much. In all my other placements I've shadowed the students for a week or so to get used to the language and how to examine the patients in French before being confident enough to work on my own. This means I've really missed having other students around to show me the ropes as the internes are often a bit busy to explain things.
Having said all that, I think if I'd done this placement earlier on it would have been a really good one. Rheumatology in France is a much bigger deal than in the UK. On my first day the chef de service said to me that in the UK we have maybe 600-700 consultant rheumatologists, compared to 2500 in France! I can't vouch for the accuracy of those figures but it certainly covers a much wider area of medicine here, dealing with many patients I think would be seen by orthopaedics at home. I've seen lots of joint injections, joint ultrasounds, DEXA scanning, and it's been good practice for interpreting X-rays.
Something else that's been occupying my brain instead of rheumatology this past week has been the election, and I had an interesting conversation with another student about it today. I mentioned that I'd been keenly following all the activities at home from Nantes and she laughed and said something about how it was typically English and we have a reputation for being very engaged and active in politics. This kind of surprised me as it wasn't something I'd ever been aware of before and I thought we usually have quite large numbers of people who don't vote? Then the student asked if I had voted and when I said yes she laughed again and said that she has never voted and doesn't really know anybody who does. It's interesting, I haven't really learned a single thing about French politics since I've been here but apparently the low numbers of voters is a real problem and (as Alex pointed out to me) isn't it strange that they would be so keen on striking over everything and anything yet not care enough to vote in their elections?
Tomorrow is one of the bank holidays I mentioned earlier (for the Ascension) and to celebrate there's a big gathering in Place Royale in town. The Facebook event was called 'Apéro Géant' and basically it just involves everybody congregating in the main square with alcohol - no entertainment arranged, no real rhyme or reason to it, just 'we've all got the day off tomorrow so let's get drunk in the street'. Last time I checked it had around 19,500 (!!!!) confirmed guests and thousands more maybes so we've decided to give it a wide berth, although we will be heading into town tomorrow morning to see what kind of havoc has been wreaked on the place!
Marie
xxx
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