Gastro review

As promised here's a little review of my gastro placement in case anybody reading this is thinking about choosing Nantes for European Option in the future!

Firstly I thought the placement was really well organised, the supervisor was really nice and prepared for my arrival. The staff were already aware that I had to do UPSAs, UCEXs etc and helped me make arrangements to get things signed off without me having to tell them first.

Secondly, the days were LONG! 7.30 am till 7.30pm was my longest but average was maybe 8.30-6.30. At first I thought it's just a French thing to have such long working days but apparently not, a few students have told me this gastro placement has a reputation for being hard work. The long days weren’t so bad when there were lots of new patients so I was kept busy taking histories and examining but otherwise the externes seemed reluctant to give me other tasks to do, particularly didn’t seem to have much faith in my written French e.g. writing letters and requests! This meant I got kind of bored a lot of the time and did a lot of sitting around. Whether this is related to the placement itself or just a reflection of the particular externes I was working with I'm not sure. They were very nice and friendly though - more 'these are our jobs, you don't have to worry about doing too much work' rather than just not wanting to include me!

I kind of felt like a lazy English student complaining about this but it is worth thinking about because as we’ve said before, after you factor in time for commuting to hospital and eating dinner etc that timetable doesn’t really leave much time to enjoy Nantes, make friends, arrange things like bank accounts and CAF, all the little things that Erasmus is all about.

Will blog again soon about Rheon's visit this weekend as soon as I've got the photos up!
Marie
xxx