I’m into my third month of internship, and despite the horrifying hours and occasional frustration, I really like my job. Liking clinical work, as well as science helps keep the idea of the clinician-scientist alive, even if I haven’t worked out yet how I’ll combine them.

Beautiful work in a disease-relevant model. Congrats all!

I don’t love private healthcare. But the inefficiencies within the public sector are insane, and there’s almost no incentive to streamline or optimise systems. And honestly, I don’t think it’s fixable.

I just worked 92 hours in a 7 day stretch, and I would not recommend it. But at least in exchange for the 12 days in a row I’ve worked, I get a single day off. It’s the little things.

The HPCSA internship logbook repeatedly misspells the word “pregnancy” as “pregnancynancy”. So I really trust them to regulate the profession and protect the public.

Congratulations to Professor Valerie Mizrahi, Director of UCT IDM on her election as Fellow of the Royal Society, London, for her substantial contribution to the advancement of science, particularly in the area of tuberculosis in Africa. Read more: news.uct.ac.za/images/userfil…

Proud to see this finally out after 3 years, a pandemic and a return to med school. Hope it’s a good read! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

Are you burnt out, or do you actually just not like being a doctor?

I’m becoming increasingly interested in the historical evolution of medical note taking, especially in South Africa, where electronic records are patchily implemented - As Adam Rodman notes in one of his Bedside Rounds episodes, how we document reflects how we think.

When you listen to descriptions of the current NHS, it doesn’t sound too different from SA either

The worst part of working in public healthcare in South Africa at the moment is dealing with patients who have waited 8 hours to see an overworked doctor in an understaffed facility. And then telling them that things are not going to get better - they’re actively getting worse.

The scale of this security breach is huge. Essentially the entire public sector laboratory infrastructure is down for days to potentially weeks. The impact on patient care is going to be enormous.

It’s crazy how much worse GSH has gotten in the 18 months I’ve worked here. Staff shortages, theatre lists cut, no lab IT systems, no functioning lifts, now no PACS for radiology. At our leading academic hospital. And it’s even worse elsewhere.

Training clinician scientists in South Africa is possible. But it requires multiple steps we’re not doing. It’s not enough to have an MBChB and a PhD. You need to support integrated postgraduate training and then the shift to independence. None of this happens currently.

Jono’s videos are always worth watching! S.African Syrah & its Global Glow-up | Old Road Wine Co. 12 Mile Syrah 2... youtu.be/jYi3ZSfS4qI?si… via YouTube

Is twitter/X still a good place to talk science? I may be looking for a postdoc next year, and it’s previously where I would have started looking.