Weekly Blog

Flying Home| Week #3


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This post is coming out a few days late as I only returned home from holiday on Monday.

Flying Home

Flying during the current corona virus scare was actually very interesting. Far fewer people than I expected were wearing face masks for one thing. This is the correct thing to do, given the current medical advice from WHO is that masks are only really necessary or beneficial when worn by people who are currently ill or dealing directly with ill individuals. Plus, how to wear, change and dispose of masks properly is harder than the general public really knows.

Both of my flights were pretty empty, from Adelaide to Doha and Doha to London. It really seemed that many people have made the (probably sensible) decision not to travel currently. We were extra careful this trip home to regularly use hand sanitiser throughout the flight and to wipe down the chairs we sat in.

As Adelaide doesn’t currently have a large number of Covid-19 cases, there is no need for us to self isolate at present. We will, however, be monitoring our health and will contact 111 if we have symptoms.

Placement selections

I submitted my preferences for 4th and 5th year placements this week. King’s has various hospitals, both in and out of London, which students are sent to.

There are a tonne of hospitals we can be sent to for these two years. The core King’s hospitals: Guys and St Thomas’s, King’s College Hospital, Croydon University Hospital and the Maudsley.

There are other hospitals in South London, and then several outside of London. These include Conquest in Hastings, Queen Elisabeth the Queen’s Mother in Margate and The Great Western hospital in Swindon.

As you can see there is a really big range of locations.

On top of that, the way that King’s allocated placements is VERY complicated.

First, all 500ish students are given a random ballot number. I got 149 this year, better than the 453 I got last year before I intercalated!

Next, students must choose their top 20 ‘streams’ from 130 combinations of hospitals for the different modules. The streams are somewhat like foundation year programme choices.

I made my choices based on a few factors. Firstly, I wanted to be in London for the first block (August-September). Next, I wanted to do my elective block in the January-March time, so that I could then do my transfer to FY1 block directly before graduating.

I also didn’t want to be placed at either Worthing or the Princes Royal hospital in Orpington. These would both be a couple hours commuting each way from my childhood home, where I’ll be staying in London.

I was only left with about 20 choices left once I factored these things in, so making my final choices was easy! Ranking them was slightly harder, but with 149 as my ballot number I figured it didn’t even really matter than much!

Its now back to studying and working. I’ve only got just over a month to finish my dissertation, so time is of the essence.

See you next week!

Thanks for reading, and as always please leave a comment and feel free to get in touch via the Contact page.

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Author

connordibblin@yahoo.co.uk
Connor is a medical student at King’s College London. For the 19/20 academic year he is undertaking an intercalated iBSc in Imaging Sciences, also at King’s.

Comments

Saeed Ahmed
4th April 2020 at 2:35 am

Hi Connor,
Just read your blogs; I do hope you get working in your choice hosoital, preferably in LONDON. I enjoyed your blog about Cabin Fever; I am certainly in a Cabin right now, which is my home. I am trying my best to avoid any exposure which might give me a fever! Cheers, Saeed



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Back In London | Week 4

9th March 2020