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Reflections of a year working in rural South Africa - Dr Ruben Dutta (Blog)
In August 2010, Dr Dutta and seven other London Deanery GP trainees descended upon South Africa to work in one-year out-of-programme clinical posts, based in rural community hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal.
After being here for almost a year, AHP spoke to this young doctor to find out about his time working at Mseleni Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal (on the south coast of the country). During his stay Dr Dutta has kept a blog, a must read: http://www.rubendutta.blogspot.com/
In a conversation with the young doctor, he told AHP that both clinically and in terms of everything else his experience has been a very positive one: “working in South Africa is a whole different ball-game, you see new cases, treat different types of things, and it is a great opportunity – certainly not the same as back home”.
While living in South Africa, there have been great opportunities to travel, he explains. On weekends he has travelled mostly in KwaZulu-Natal, but also been able to get as far as Johannesburg, Cape Town, Swaziland, the Kruger National Park and Victoria Falls, in Zimbabwe. He describes Mseleni as “one of the loveliest parts of South Africa, you have everything; mountains, sea, great beaches, game and bush”.
In terms of the medical experience; Dr Dutta has seen some cases that are very difficult to deal with both medically and emotionally, but he says that you just have to deal with it the best you can and move on. After being here a while “one quickly learns that there is an insurmountable amount of HIV and TB and that people present themselves for treatment very late”. He went on to explain that, by the time someone gets to the hospital, what started out as a small problem is now significantly bigger due the amount of time that has passed. One of his major challenges has been that some things which would have been a simple decision for him back home are no longer that easy when working in rural South Africa. He used the example of doing a simple blood transfusion – “you cannot give blood to just anyone in case there is a real emergency and you run out”. Dr Dutta feels that all of this, however, has made him a better doctor:
“It has been brilliant, I have learnt as much in this last year than I have in my entire five years of medical school”.
After another year of GP training, once Dr Dutta returns home, he will be a GP specialist. He looks forward to getting home, but also notes that the adjustment period could take some time. To go from rural South African medicine to a “fairly mundane routine will take some getting used to”.
