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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Heathcote

I have been spending close to one week at my rural placement, Heathcote. This place is 30 minutes away from Bendigo, which is a big regional town and 50 km from Kilmore which is a small town like Heathcote.

The population of Heathcote is around 2800 people and most of the people here are Anglo-Saxon. I hardly see any Asian people here biggrin. There are 2 doctors (GP) in the town and one small hospital. The hospital is run by one GP and that GP has resigned from the hospital last week. Now, the hospital is facing the dilemma of recruiting another GP.

This problem is a common scenario in any small town around Australia. There are not many doctors who like to work far away from major cities such as Melbourne and most of the doctors who work in rural, are being forced to work by the government.

Having said that, there are still doctors who love to work in a small community. There is one doctor, not far from Heathcote, who is still working to provide the necessary health care to the community, despite he is already 80 years old eek. It is something that amazes me.

Anyway, back to my rural rotation. I lived in a nice house next to my supervisor and it has wireless broadband internet connection. This place has a nice environment and I always saw kangaroos jumping around the neighbourhood. In fact, this morning, I already saw around 20 kangaroos alone biggrin.

Every medical student in University of Melbourne is required to spend 3 weeks in rural setting as part of their medical course. Rural rotations means that you are send to a small town, far away from your home and you have to learn what are the differences between rural and city health system. Some people were send to a place that is about 400km from Melbourne and close to the border of New South Wales. It is almost impossible for them to go back to Melbourne every weekend. Hence, they have to stay at that place for the next three weeks.

Not all accommodation has internet connection and I'm fortunate to be blessed with internet facility. Without internet, I would be stuck in rural doing nothing and getting bored.

This is my second week of rural rotation and I'm already looking forward for this rotation to end. There are not much that you can do here and I miss having superfast broadband connection at home biggrin.

6 comments:

Norain MT said...

Assalamualaikum,

To prefer broadband rather than such countrysides... Did you grow up in a town?

Hafiz said...

I grew up in a small town but for the last 6 years has been living in a big metropolitan area

hayad said...

bestnyer ayat yg dpt tgk kangaroo melompat2 kat halaman tu.

kt kg ni dpt tgk B*B* dan kadang2 monyet+kera lalu kat halaman umah,hehehe

TeacherNunu said...

waaa tengok kangaroooo bestttnyeeeeee

chem said...

salam...lama tak menjenguk...
nak gambar kangaroo satu :)

Hafiz said...

@ hayad, mula2 best juga tengok kangaroo, tapi lelama, dah bosan pula :)

@ nurul, hehe, yup. best tengok kangaroo.

@ chem, tak sempat ambil gambar kangaroo sebab mereka lompat laju sangat.