It's now been 7 weeks since I returned from Ho Chi Minh City to Oxford. From hordes of motorcycles to hordes of students. From scorching dry heat to damp cool.
It's been easy to return to normality, to taking clean wards and air-conditioning for granted. The green restraints which tied most patients to their bed frame have disappeared, replaced by a large, robotic arm which emerges from the wall, carrying an all-in-one television, phone and computer to the patient's side. Lunch is handed out three times a day, not by patients' relatives but by Carillion staff in blue t-shirts. Curtains are drawn around the bed during conversations and examinations, instead of being rolled up and out of the way. The emaciated have been replaced by the morbidly obese.
I hope the posts in this blog have been interesting, to both the medics and especially non-medics out there. If you're a medical student thinking ahead to your elective, I hope this will encourage you to travel to somewhere very different to what you're used to and see things you may never see again. Vietnam has certainly been an amazing experience for me, from both a human and a medical perspective. I hope you will also have the opportunity to visit this beautiful country one day.
It's been easy to return to normality, to taking clean wards and air-conditioning for granted. The green restraints which tied most patients to their bed frame have disappeared, replaced by a large, robotic arm which emerges from the wall, carrying an all-in-one television, phone and computer to the patient's side. Lunch is handed out three times a day, not by patients' relatives but by Carillion staff in blue t-shirts. Curtains are drawn around the bed during conversations and examinations, instead of being rolled up and out of the way. The emaciated have been replaced by the morbidly obese.
I hope the posts in this blog have been interesting, to both the medics and especially non-medics out there. If you're a medical student thinking ahead to your elective, I hope this will encourage you to travel to somewhere very different to what you're used to and see things you may never see again. Vietnam has certainly been an amazing experience for me, from both a human and a medical perspective. I hope you will also have the opportunity to visit this beautiful country one day.
