Off to climb a mountain

I’ll be flying off to Kenya today, on a Wilderness Medicine course. I never even knew there was such a thing as Wilderness Medicine, but this year has been a delightful discovery in medicine. If you want to follow us, you can click share.garmin.com/WildMedic or follow @WildMedix on Twitter. I’ll give a proper update when

The Safe Working Hours Wristband Campaign is Missing the Point – Here’s Why

Junior doctors (all doctors?) are to wear colour-coded wristbands to indicate the amount hours they have worked during their shift. This is something I support because it raises awareness not only among our supervisors, but also our patients – who, as I’ve shared before, are appalled when they realise the extent of our hours.

Ten Books Set Outside the USA (and Canada and the UK)

I love this week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesdays! As a South African, I’m acutely aware of the importance of reading local and international books, but our market is mostly saturated by books from the USA and the UK (I love you guys, but representation matters!) I have two prior lists with more or less the same topic

A Thousand Naked Strangers by Kevin Hazzard | Book Review

Medical memoirs are a dime a dozen, but I’ve never read a medic’s memoir and the title, “A Thousand Naked Strangers” is just too good to pass up. A Thousand Naked Strangers is an Atlantan’s chronicle of the decade he worked as a paramedic in the city. I’ve never really known much about Atlanta, except

Which Med School Should You Choose?

I’ve been getting many questions from South African students about which medical school they should choose and which is the best, so instead of trying to remember what I said every time, I figured I’d write a general post about my thoughts.

Here’s a disclaimer though: I applied to only one medical school (long story) so I didn’t have the problem of needing to choose. So feel free to take my opinion with a pinch of salt (as you should with this whole entire blog, actually :P).

Late Presentations: A New Perspective

When medical students and doctors get bored, they start sharing “late presentation” stories. My first such experience was in third year, when a homeless man presented to us with horribly advanced rectal cancer. I was so disturbed that he had allowed it to progress so far, and I shared the story in a post. I

Ten Books I’m Not Sure I Want To Read

I’m linking up with The Broke and The Bookish to talk about ten books I have considered reading, but which I am unsure about. I have loads of those! At the end of this post, please participate in my poll by vetoing one book!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Street Life

Linking up with The Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge. I took this photo while relaxing at a wonderful social enterprise, Sozo, in the backpacker’s area of Ho Chi Minh City. It was a day that I just wanted to relax and observe, and I found a good vantage point from their balcony.

Elective Extravaganza: Internal and ED in Malaysia

Here is a little something different for Elective Extravaganza: what happens when you realise you chose the “wrong” thing for your elective? Aziza Aini (a fellow blogger, click on over) is a third year medical student in Malaysia who, during her second year, did an elective in Internal Medicine. Although she enjoyed it, she realised

Vascular Surgery, Exam Anxiety and Stuff

I think I may, for the first time in my life, have some genuine academic anxiety. I’ll be writing my first set of FINAL med school finals in ten weeks. Six domains in four days: Urology, Ophthalmology, Otorhinolaryngology, Anaesthesiology, Family Medicine, Surgery and Orthopaedics. And let’s not forget that Surgery = general + head&neck +