Being a Doctor…

I’ve started working at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH for short) and my first week was working night shift, which I’ve just finished. Now, starting work as an intern is pretty daunting, let alone finding out that I was starting on nights first. The intern rotations are  split into 10-11 weeks terms and the first rotation I am a reliever. This means that I will cover people who are taking sick days, or on annual leave. It’s a pretty good time to be a reliever because nobody is taking any annual leave at the start of the year, and not many people will be sick. So, the lovely roster manager Charmaine rostered me to be the “extra” on nights to give a bit of help to the guys who were starting first week.

I was on ‘Surgical Nights’, which involves looking after all of the problems with Surgical patients on the ward. I think there are about 60-70 surgical patients at a guess. I worked with a guy called Aaron, while there were three interns on ‘Medical Nights’ (Medical patients). Check out our little photo just before we started the first night.

Khoa, Me, Tsai, Aaron and Brendan

This photo was courtesy of Khoa’s LX3 camera and Khoa would like himself identified as the “hotshot doctor who led the crew.” The other guys haven’t requested any description of themselves, so I will quickly do it. Tsai is the “guy who loved to watch me sleep”, Aaron is a “gym junkie, wanna be orthopod who hates delirius patients”, and Brendan is the “trigger happy intern who will gladly prescribe intravenous fluids for whoever, whenever.”

Suffice to say that it was an eventful week on nights and the reward for working one week is one week off, which I have now. Apparently, working night shift reduces our life expectancy, so I’m trying to get my body back into normal day patterns. It was an eye opener into the world of medicine, with everything from prescribing morphine for the first time to patients dying happening over the week. There are not a lot of staff working at night, so much of it is up to us, but there is good support available when we need it.

More on my life as an intern to come…

Game vs India today Cancelled!

Press Statement

Indian Team a No-Show for Challenge Series
The Singapore Slingers learned early this morning that the team from India, Sathyabama Stars, to play in the Challenge Series tomorrow would not be arriving.

Travel hiccups, immigration and clearance issues were given as the reasons.  As a result the Slingers were left with no option but to cancel the Sunday game and commence immediately to reschedule a replacement match.

The Singapore Slingers are now working to replace this game with a high profile opponent and preliminary plans are to play next Saturday or Sunday.

“We are extremely disappointed with the organisers of the team and lack of professionalism in not fully informing us of the problems until this morning when we went to pick up the team.  We will now be arranging for the 11th and final game of the Singapore Challenge Series to be played next Saturday or Sunday.  We will be honouring all tickets purchased for this game, including season tickets, for next week’s game.  Tickets purchased through Sistic will be refunded if required.  We really regret this unforeseen circumstance that led to the cancellation of the game and we’d like to thank all our supporters for their understanding”, said Managing Director Bob Turner.

Sincerely,

Team Slingers
Singapore Slingers

Game vs RP Harbour (Philippines)

Sorry for the delay in getting this up, but on Sunday (4th Jan) we played the RP Harbour PBL team from the Philippines. We won 97-72 in what was a pretty even and maybe slightly below par first three quarters.

You can read a match report on the game and find stats here on the Slingers website. For Jason’s perspective on the game, check it out here.

For us, Eric was spectacular again with 22 points and 22 rebounds. John Fitzgerald was a ton of energy throughout the whole game, scoring 18 pts and grabbing 13 rebounds. Kirkland had 15pts, I had 14pts and Sam had 13pts.

RP Harbour played well to keep up with our size. They were deadly in the mid-range, knocking down any shot that they took. It was not until the fourth quarter, where I think they tired a little and starting missing their shots that we took over. They also had a lot of fouls which hurt them at the end as players were fouled out.

If anyone has video of that alley-oop I threw to Eric in the last quarter, please post it! It definitely stood out as the play of the game in my mind. It was huge. There was a period in the last quarter where we just got stops and ran like we usually do and played our exciting type of basketball.

On Sunday we take on the India Sabres team. This team is bringing three American imports, including one which has played in the NBA, John Wallace.