Thursday 28 November 2013

Twitter-mania

Right folks.. so I have joined twitter! https://twitter.com/KateDRuralGPST

 If anyone has any questions about Rural GP training or life in highlands/islands, please tweet me and I'll try to get back to you! I am new to this though.. so apologies for any slow/lost responses!


Sunday 17 November 2013

Fine Dining and New Friends...

What a week!

Busy week, started with a study day for my diploma in family sexual reproductive health. Great day consolidating knowledge from the e-learning modules in practical sessions and discussion groups. This is a fantastic course which I was supported through with study leave by NES.  

We were lucky to be invited to have dinner with delegates from the Japanese Association for Development of Community Medicine (JADECOM), who were visiting the highlands to look at delivery of rural healthcare in Scotland. The evening gave us a fascinating insight into medicine in Japan and there were interesting discussions about the similarities and challenges in medicine and general practice between the highlands and rural areas in Japan. We also discussed the importance of education and training as part of delivery of rural healthcare in Scotland by encouraging early rural medical student placements, rural GP training programme and the Rural Fellowships for newly qualified GPs. We hope to continue to develop a working relationship between the 2 countries in the future.




The week ended with the 2nd Annual Rural GP training workshop, which this year was based in the Western Isles. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet with other rural trainees in different locations and at different stages of their training. There was a fantastic sense of comradery and we felt as group we had a really strong identity with many shared views and interests. We left as firm friends and look forward to keeping in touch and visiting each other across the highlands and islands from Shetland, Orkney, Wick, Fort William, Grantown-on-spey and Oban.




We also had a great time discussing rural GP issues, learnt more about the forensic side of GP, practice based small group learning and we were lucky enough to be hosted by the Stornoway Search & Rescue Team who kindly showed us around their fantastic helicopter and showed us their medical equipment, discussed the challenges of retrieving patients and pre-hospital  emergency care challenges.