Women's Health

Finished Week Two of Women's Health now. Week One was crazy, continuous lectures from 8am-4pm, Monday to Friday, with a test at the end... so exhausted by the end of the week.

Week Two I got assigned to Birth Suites (lucky me, talk about getting thrown in the deep end). Basically involves sitting around waiting for women to give birth. Me being the lucky extra person in my group, got allocated to Family Birth Centre which is manned by midwives only and for low-risk women wanting natural, intervention-free births. They usually only take midwifery students, not medical students, and generally have the view that natural is best, pain is good, and doctors, when they're required, are necessary evils. The midwives were nice enough to me though, and allowed me to ring up sometimes instead of being there all day waiting when there was nothing happening, whereas the students allocated to the other wards had to stay there the whole shift. The downside was that the FBC had a lot less turnover of patients compared to the wards, so by the end of the week I was still 2 short of my required 7 deliveries. Also I didn't get to see any epidurals, episiotomies or instrumental deliveries (vacuum or forceps) - a good thing that the women I saw didn't need them, but not-so-good medical-education-wise. Also no routine examinations or foetal monitoring (CTGs, scalp monitoring)... oh well... as they say, if I don't become an obstetrician, it won't matter; and if I do, I'll learn it all properly again anyway.