Posted by alexandra_k on December 13, 2013, at 15:43:55
In reply to Re: damn, posted by Dr. Bob on December 10, 2013, at 1:24:27
:-)
The conference went really well. On the last day I learned about work a couple philosophy people are doing in NZ. One of them employed somewhere over in the medical school working on improving root cause analysis by importing some tools from philosophy of science to get more useful causes. Another of them collaborating with economists etc to develop a predictive tool for child abuse... He's working out some of the ethical implications (legal background, too) for a certain amount of false positive interventions etc. They are thinking something like... To try and get a person in there to check things are alright... To maybe talk to the kids. Stuff like that. I think it is great. Might have made a huge difference to someone like me.
They are going to give me a desk in the department - which will be great. I need to have a go at developing healthier work habits. Working on bed isn't ideal for my sleep hygine etc. I will try and develop routine. They said... It is good for the department to have me around. So... That is great. I do care about philosophy. I have also tried a lot this conference to think more positively while continuing on (what I take to be) something in the tradition of my supervisor. I mean... I think he is onto a lot when he practically makes us attend all papers in our field. That is important. But I think it helps people a lot when you talk regretfully about opportunity cost and show respect for the theorists / areas they are working on. The women are more supportive... It is nice to hear that people enjoyed the talk or that they thought you gave a nice paper etc. Doesn't take much time to get that out there - and makes a huge difference (see! I can be social!) Anyway... Positive... Is important.
Met someone who is just starting out her PhD something in ethics. Pediatric nurse background. Really nice lady. I wasn't sure what was up but turns out... She is really well connected with things... In the sense... She knows a guy who does medical aid work in Vanuatu (with an anesthetist). A little bit of checking / discussion... I think that expired medications are better than no medications at all. And that licensing etc well... Treatment or no treatment? I mean... I get why some operations would harm more than help. Patients interests... Anyway... She said he was always looking for volunteers. Not part of a formal organization. Not operating out of a hospital or anything like that. And I was a little surprised... Pre-med kids? 'One thing on their minds' apparently... 3 weeks...
I have looked into it a little more... I see... Living conditions are variable. Of course they look out for their precious children volunteers. Med students too. Which can be more trouble / harm than it is worth, depending... I guess the idea is to try and minimize their inevitable trauma / culture shock so they are more likely to return down the track. And... I've come to learn how it can be tricky to get people capable of following simple instructions. And... I can. And I'm a fast learner about some things. And I would rather try and come up to speed with a small team than hand out tins of food or whatever with a bunch of do-good-y 18 year olds on their first OE outside the affluent suburb of Ponsonby (or whatever). I... Will look into it a bit more and see. I guess my biggest concern in the whole thing is my need for personal space. I don't know if I could have anything like a lockable room. Long work hours of course, I'd understand that. Things would be different because I wouldn't be trying to read / write / work on my thesis. I think... I think I would like to try this. And then I'll have a better idea whether medicine is something I want to do. Whether I can develop the stomach for things. And so on.
Vanuatu... Really low levels of education. Seems like there are a bunch of languages but everyone speaks something that is a bit of a pidgeon english / french with mostly english words. so... not much chatting. Which could help, really, becuase I think my main problem before was that I assumed they understood because they seemed to have English. And then you have these massive cruise ships come on in full of tourists for luxury resorts... And you have these locals... Subsistence fishing and a little farming. Maleria. Damn. I really don't know much of anything at all about the pacific islands. Except that it makes sense that you yell at each other all the time since you can't have visual contact with the thick vegetation. I think... I would like to do this. If I get things moving... Maybe I could go next summer? I need to see how much it will cost etc etc... I think I would like to go when the tourists aren't there... Only... I don't suppose that matters. Go when I can. Hopefully... I'll get to go back.
I see we aren't allowed to do placements in the pacific islands. I see why now. Great place to practice clinical skills... Not a great place to become enculturated into the western medical community. I see. I don't suppose the drug reps are over there handing out their free lunches.
I had my initial appointment with the new mental health people. A doc, a training p-doc, a nurse. It went really well. Lady doc. Sounded a bit welsh. Nice. They will have an inter-disciplinary team meeting and email me. They were just like 'okay, yeah' when I asked them to please email me and that I wasn't so good with phone. So that was nice. They listened... I felt heard, anyway. Pretty exhausted after the conference... But things seemed to go pretty well, yeah. I... Well, I just realized... That I felt like she heard me. And that is a big deal, yeah. She asked about the jumping thing, too. And I got the chance to think about it properly and I did jump, yeah. But there was a serious miscommunication about my being discharged so ubruptly. I... Hope I'm better at communicating now. Anyway. I tried to be even handed. I'm not angry. Even though root cause analysis under any system seems to have no room for incompetent people... I don't think it was about that... I think it was more that the doc was in a hurry and out by the end of the morning to give more time to arrange beds for the afternoon... Anyway... Unless there is a pattern of such incidents involving him (and to be fair I don't suppose that is a job for root cause analysis to find?) it probably is a systemic issue that could more effectively be prevented in future by altering aspects of the discharge process. Especially since my mate Howard actually did kill himself (as he said he would) after he got discharged back to a house that (he discovered on day leave) had been nearly wrecked by vandals.
There is autism research being done around here... It seems to be nice in the sense of being... More respectful of difference. Rather than 'deficit we will fix'. There seem to be a few interesting people, too. Consumers, I mean. High functioning. There are social groups.. Maybe I'll look into it a little at some point. I was asked about my plans for next year etc. They didn't laugh. They did ask if I was sure I wanted to be a doc. I said I'd just found out about the pacific island thing and was thinking on it... I said I probably would be autism-screened out. That that must have gone wrong with the Otago interview. She said something about... Well... What I'm taking now is that I wasn't exactly honest with Otago. I... Didn't know how to tell them I was thinking Orthopedic Surgeon (thought they would laugh I guess and I didn't want to talk about my feet injuries in case they asked how they happened and I didn't want to lie). Anyway... I guess it is obvious I wouldn't make a good GP or psychiatrist (they were fairly taken aback at my talking about better internet access as a solution to rural mental health). Anyway... Maybe it was about fit. And they didn't think I was a good one.
We had a fire drill. I managed to get myself down 13 flights of stairs no trouble. Must have taken a good 5 minutes trying to talk myself out of the need to though, heh. Carpets getting cleaned... I'm settling into the space okay. I do like my privacy but... Unwinding. Decompressing. I think I'm not too obsessively weird or anything about it and that I'll come right. I mean... I appreciate the notice on people entering the property... But, well, that is why there are laws about that to protect the tenants.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1055362
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20131211/msgs/1056073.html