HOW I BECAME A GYNAECOLOGIST

 Medicine is a long and confusing journey. Going to medical school in my hometown, I had no idea what I was stepping into. One of my family friends who was a qualified dentist tried to convince me to do dentistry because the training is easier and there are no internship night shifts. My university marks were borderline for the medical school near home and I could be accepted in another province. My family suggested I choose pharmacology as a second option so I managed to stay close. I had made up my mind and I wanted to become a doctor.

Medical school and the difficult exams went smoothly, we were slowly introduced to bedside teaching and the hospitals and I found it very fascinating. Some of my friends didn’t enjoy dealing with patients and they had already made up their minds to exit clinical medicine or do radiology or pathology. Community service was in the rural areas. I was doing family medicine in a rural clinic. Dealing mostly with outpatients, prescribing paracetamol or chronic meds for diabetes and hypertension. I remember how the community service dentist used to suffer and sweat with loads of locals coming for tooth extractions every day!

I had made up my mind about emigrating to South Africa after my community service. The first two years of immigration were spent dealing with the registration process to get into the south African internship program. It was a difficult time waking up every morning feeling bored with no purpose. When there is no work there is no money and no fun! I learned a lot in my two years of internship and now I understand the reason South African doctors get a lot of respect internationally. In Medical school, I went through a phase where I wanted to become a cardiologist. The books and the theory were nice, but the internal medicine rotation, dealing with chronically ill patients, seeing the cardiac echo, and the cath lab weren’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Stepping into a busy labour ward was love at first sight!

I always wanted to do my SA internship at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, but I did not get it. I made it to Bara for community service and spent 12 months in maternity rotation and grew very quickly. I saw it all. Getting through the primary exams of obstetrics in Bara gave me the opportunity to get into the specializing program the following year. It was a four-year program with the COVID pandemic, a wedding, and a pregnancy on top of the crazy night shifts, exams, and a research project.

 





Myself and the facility midwife in Community service back home in 2012, and a Christmas shift at Bara Hospital in 2018 with our nursing staff.  

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