So the time finally came to be exiled to a far off land in search of more experience. Maybe I am being slightly dramatic. This month I spent 3 weeks at one of our placement sites at a seaside Essex town. As the commute would have taken me well over 3 hours I decided against a 5am start and opted to book myself in to some hospital accommodation which looked very similar to my student accommodation circa 2004!
My mission was clear, spend 3 weeks here and learn as much as I could about Elekta machines. (There are 2 main types of Linear Accelerators used in radiotherapy and I have been trained using Varian.) I spent Monday to Friday in Essex and traveled back to London at the weekends to work at my glamorous pub job. I can’t say I was particularly looking forward to this 3 week stint but I used ‘more experience’ as my mantra in the weeks leading up. It’s so easy to get comfortable in a base site that you spend a large portion of your placement time at, but with hindsight it’s important to get out of your comfort zone to enhance your learning. I only have positive things to say about my placement in a far off destination! The department was busy so I got to really work on my skill set and get some core competencies signed off and the fact I can now use a different machine is going to make me that little bit more employable when I graduate (I hope?!). The staff at the department were great at integrating me into their team and 2 City graduates from the year above me were also recently employed so it was great to see them with jobs. Again helping me see the light at the end of the tunnel… That could be me next year!
I’m not going to lie it wasn’t all roses. Working in Essex during the week and working in London on weekends was tiring. I also thought I would use my evenings during the week to get some of my assignments started… that didn’t happen. I came back at the end of my 3 weeks pooped with a great knowledge of Netflix! Even with the best of intentions and not many distractions, spending all day in placement trying to take in as much as you can leaves very little brain power to come in and do work in the evenings. So like I said in my last blog, it’s so important to start assignments early.
The hospital also treated more inpatients than other departments I had been to on placement before and I quite often helped the porters go and get patients to bring them down for their radiotherapy. This meant I saw some really sick patients which I’m not going to lie was hard, but I also got to see what other professionals do for our patients, the multi-disciplinary approach that is so prominent in our lectures and learning outcomes. But shout out to the nurses out there. You are truly awesome and the unsung heroes of the medical profession.
I have now finished my placement block for term 1 and have academic (lectures in uni) right up until our Christmas break. It’s weird to think the next time I am in placement will be February and I will only have 4 months left of my degree!!!
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