Our First Day

For our first day we received a complimentary curb-side pick up from Chris. Once we arrived at the hospital, we were introduced to the man who would be our CI, or “Clinical Instructor” for the year.  He took us on a more in-depth tour of the hospital, and had a good chat with us about our program and exactly what we’ll be working on through the year.  This whole ordeal is new for all of us – the hospital has never taken on students from the US, let alone students with our program structure.  We must have had to explain how we – 4^th year students- have not had any clinical experience about 10 times, at least.  And for us, EVERYTHING is new:  the spelling of words, slang, protocols, measurements, the transit system…

We quickly realized that we couldn’t have gotten a better hospital to spend our year at.  Flinders is a teaching hospital, so everyone that works there is very understanding and used to working with students.   All the patients that come through there are very understanding and familiar with students as part of the exams.  We feel almost like we’re getting a bit spoiled, because quite a few of the crew have already been so accommodating and generous (like our curb-side pick up for our first day!!) Not to mention that our CI – one of the men we will be learning from for the next year – is the brain behind “Wikiradiology” – a website even our professors in Podunk little Klamath know about and use!

After stumbling through our tour and a sort of introduction to the hospital and department, we had the chance to get our hands wet – to get our hands on some patients and take our first x-rays!! And learn where some of those not-so-subtle differences (like measurements) really come into play!

Boy, did we jump heads first!  We observed and assisted with Weight-bearing Ankles, Ballcatchers views, Open-Mouth AP’s, Sunrise Knees, Coyle-Method Elbows, Flexion/Extension Spines, and SI joints!  To most of you these probably mean nothing, but to us it is a whirlwind of information that has started to gather cobwebs in our memories!  We laugh thinking back on our extern coordinator talking constantly about how many CXR’s (Chest X-rays) we’ll be doing, and how we will probably comp on them first, and on our first day I only saw a single one!  It’s wonderful!

By the end of the day, we could both proudly say we’d taken our first “official” x-rays; a wrist series for me,  and a knee series for Chad!