Rural Placement Can Be Quite Tough

I learned so many things during my rural placement and perhaps one of the most important is to have a very wide knowledge on many different conditions, know how to assess and treat them, and then know how and when to adapt to the different situation you may be subjected to.

My rural placement required that I spend mornings in the medical/surgical inpatient ward and afternoons in the musculo outpatient section.

It was quite a challenge having to turn my mind on to ‘inpatient mode’ in the morning, turn that off and switch to ‘musculo mode’ in the afternoon. Since many of the patients are older, I have to switch on my gerontology mode most of the time and every now and then you get to have cardiopulmonary patients too. When I was told on the first day that that was what’s going to happen, I immediately visualized the mess I was going to cause.

I was talking to one of my supervisors who worked in Broome herself and she told me that rural placement is usually like that. You have to be ready for anything and everything. There will be many times that your treatment sessions are of interdisciplinary nature because there won’t necessarily be OT’s and SP’s in the rural areas. I thought that was a challenge.

Anyway, as I learned, the key to surviving in that particular rural placement was to get as much as you can from all the health professionals present in the facility. I found it useful to keep asking questions throughout the placement. I was lucky because all of them were quite willing to help. Also, I learned to be more active in terms of seeking knowledge on the different cases I encountered.