Interview
Dr Cheryl Johnson has been employed in the Auckland region since 2003 and knows the Auckland hospitals well. She is currently a Geriatric Medicine advanced trainee.....
Cheryl describes a typical day for us working as a Internal
Medical Registrar...
Handover is at 8.00am and takes about 30 minutes. Handover
consists of a discussion regarding previous days' admissions and is
often followed by a brief teaching session. Following handover is
ward rounds. If the team has been on call the previous day, the
Consultant will do the ward round; otherwise they usually review
the patients about 2-3 times a week. The registrar is expected to
do the ward round with the house officer on the remaining days. The
rest of the day is taken up with the acute care of patients,
outpatient clinics and paperwork. On average, one day a week is a
14 hour on-call admitting from ED and depending on the hospital
either 1 in 2 or 1 in 4 weekends on-call for at least part of the
weekend. There is a good amount of teaching with weekly FRACP
examination preparation lectures, participating in grand rounds and
X-ray conferences.
The three hospitals Cheryl has worked at are quite different
from each other, which means Internal Medical Registrars gain
exposure to a variety of medical cases.
North Shore Hospital is a great place to work as a basic
trainee. A busy environment, off-set by the camaraderie and the
people you work with. As North Shore Hospital does not have any
specialist wards, you get to treat all the patients you admit,
which is great way to increase your internal medicine knowledge. It
is a great training ground for junior Registrars and you get a lot
of support from the Consultants. You will have clinic once a week
where you will see a higher number of patients compared to other
hospitals, but the variety of cases is great. You also get free
parking.
Auckland City Hospital is the tertiary referral centre for the
greater Auckland area, making it a great teaching hospital and a
great place to get exposure to Medical Specialities. As there are
specialist wards, the downside is that when you are working as a
Internal Medical Registrar, you get less exposure to the medical
specialties. However, two months of the run is set aside for
relieving other specialties which increases your exposure. The
environment is one that is focussed on learning and you will learn
a lot from knowledgeable specialists. The outpatient clinics are on
average scheduled every two weeks and are generally less busy. In
between your acute work there is often more time to spend studying.
There is no free parking but the coffee is great!
Middlemore Hospital offers you a happy medium. The cases you get
to see are generally more acute because of the demographic and the
socioeconomic status of the population. As a general rule, patients
tend to present to hospital later and may not seek GP help sooner.
There is one outpatient clinic every other week for which you need
to travel either to Howick or Manukau. There are a number of
specialist wards similar to Auckland City Hospital, however when
you are on acute admitting you get exposure to the subspecialties
as you are able to admit directly to those wards.
Overall, being a Internal Medicine Registrar within the Auckland
region gives you a variety of experience and you have great role
models to learn from. You are always going to have a job and there
is so much scope for specialising. It is a specialist pathway that
will interest people who like investigating, problem solving and
developing a therapeutic relationship with patients.