Medical Registration - Finally!
on Shona in Sierra Leone (Sierra Leone), 13/Nov/2010 16:30, 34 days ago
So, on Monday I finally got my medical registration. And what a shambles it was!I left home at 7.30am in the rain and got a taxi to Aberdeen to the VSO office where I was going to meet Theresa (the VSO the health programme manager) at 8.30am (I was there by 8am) to give me and two other new doctors a lift there. Theresa and the driver were there so I suggested that we go to the hotel where the other doctors were to pick them up, seeing as they were en route anyway. It turns out that Theresa had not informed them that she was going to pick them up at 8.30am and one of them was still in bed! Bless him he got up and was ready in about 5 minutes.So we got going across town, stopping at my flatmate Carole’s office on route because Theresa had bizarrely left the application forms for Tash and Alex there on Friday – without telling Carole or me about this….We got to the SL Medical and Dental Council Offices, met the lovely Registrar (who had worked in Ramsgate, it turned out) and were told that, despite us having given VSO our documents and photos goodness only knows how many times, the Council had STILL not been given the required number of any of our documents. My CV had somehow gone missing in the process of it all. (In preparation for this, I had taken my USB with me…) The Registrar got very confused by the Latin on my degree certificates… but we eventually persuaded him that they were a medical and science degree!By then it was evident that Theresa would have to go back to the VSO office to get more photos of everyone, so I went with her. I printed out my CV (again, times 3) while there and personally counted out all the copies of everything before we left.Back to the Council. In the meantime, Tash and Alex had already been interviewed. It turns out that they then waited for the third British doctor (me) before interviewing the Philipino and Dr from the DRC…. He said it was just a formality and that he knew we were well trained, that there is a fee of $500 but that was not my problem but that the Ministry and VSO would have to fight it out between them, and thank you so much for coming to volunteer in our country. He was one of the nicest people I have met here so far. And he confirmed that, yes, I can now practice, and the bit of paper will follow in two weeks time (I’ll believe that when I see it, but anyway!)So Tash, Alex and I thought we would head to Bliss for lunch (it was lunchtime by now). We stopped off at my house on route to pick up my laptop so that they could check their email. Bliss is up the road with all the roadworks and it took us a while to get there, only to discover– its closed on Mondays! So we went a bit further away to a place at the beach – also closed on Mondays! We finally found that Mamba Point (the place that does the films on a Tuesday night) was open, so had lunch there…. Which was v nice and well deserved we thought.