I recently realised that some of my posts have disappeared into thin air. I’m not sure how, but I’m reposting them courtesy of the web archive.
By some kind of dumb luck, I am doing my Community Service posting at an incredible children’s hospital in Cape Town, rather than the archetypal middle-of-nowhere clinic post we all expect for ComServe.
And it’s incredible.
This hospital is just something else. It’s public, but has so much private funding that it might as well be a private hospital. It gets a lot of private patients so clearly I’m not alone in my perception.
Some things that continue to blow my mind:
1. Pain management team
Absolutely essential, of course, but not something we had access to in the Eastern Cape. As part of pain management, our kiddies have access to aromatherapy and music therapy. How cool is that?!
2. Psycho-social services
When adults bring kids to hospital and they have witnessed violent events, the adults get debriefing practically before the kid even leaves the emergency unit. When a kid gets hit by a stray bullet, he gets trauma debriefing. There are support groups for kids with any number of conditions. All of these things should be a given, should’t they? But again, it’s something I’ve never seen.
3. Palliative Care Team
Last year, I often had to decide on my own whether a patient was for active resuscitation or not. It was a horrible responsibility, but not that I’ve learned just how much is involved within the practice of palliative care, I realise how WRONG it is for a clinician to have to make such decisions without an entire palliative care team.
My entire view of palliation has changed.
4. Gorgeous Operating Theaters
There are theaters with views of Table Mountain, and I just… wow. (The on-call room also has a view of the mountain.)
5. Clinicians who love their jobs
I can’t begin to tell you how amazing it is to be surrounded by senior doctors who are still passionate about their work. It gives me hope.
* * *
One thing that is not available in the land of milk and honey is small-size theater scrubs. I still have to use a whole host of improvisations to prevent my pants from falling down when I scrub in for theater.
Oh well.
Whispers Unto the Aether 
Sounds divine. Can you order small sized scrubs and have the laundry at the hospital sanitize and press them? Not that you should have to but at least they’ll be yours. I mean you can even get them embroidered with your name 😀
Thanks for this, way back when 🙂 I know that our consultants have their tailored scrubs sanitised by hospital laundry. Perhaps I could have organised it for myself, too. However, my contract ends this month. If I ever come back here, I’ll do that!