Working Life

I had initially planned to write a short blogpost on medical life in New Zealand a couple of months ago but never really got round to it. Since arriving in Auckland almost 6months ago (yes, really that long ago already!) I have rotated through 3 different jobs in 3 separate hospitals.

My first 3 months were spent in Auckland City Hospital working as an orthopaedic house officer. I found the first couple of days pretty stressful and initially found myself wondering what the hell I had done moving here! Fortunately it didn’t take too long to get used to the system and I found myself settling in quite quickly. It was nice to have Rosemary and Katrina (two other Brits) around as they started at the same time as me and we all had pretty similar fears / doubts / thoughts in the first few weeks and so it was nice to be able to share that with them. In the end I was quite sad to leave orthopaedics, mainly because of the great people that I worked with. However, if I am entirely honest, I did find the job somewhat boring (paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork) and it made me realise that it was probably time for me to step up and apply for a registrar post. After much debate I eventually put in my application to work as an A&E registrar, and shortly after was offered a job working in Middlemore Hospital.

Before moving to Middlemore as an A&E registrar I had to spend 4 weeks working as a house officer in Geriatric Rehabilitation in North Shore Hospital. The commute was a royal pain in the ass and although the ward team were lovely, this job made me realise that I don’t have the patience for 5 hour ward rounds / ward work!

I have now been working as an Emergency Medicine registrar for about 1 month and am absolutely loving it. I feel that I have so much to learn and it can be quite daunting at times; however, every day brings something new and this is probably the only specialty I can say that I get genuine enjoyment from. Let’s see how the next few months go!