Baggas’ Blog

Tonight I find myself in Townsville, in the north of Queensland. Never been here before, in fact this is the furthest North I have been in Australia thus far (I’ll break my south record next month when we go to Tasmania). I’m here for a three day course in Travel Medicine, starting tomorrow, as part of my Masters degree.

My midnight flight from Perth to Brisbane was delayed by an hour last night but thankfully I slept pretty much the whole flight, even though I didn’t get the window seat I requested as I volunteered to move so a couple could sit together. In spite of this I think I was asleep before we took off and woke just before descent. Then it was a short flight from Brisbane up here to Townsville.

I had a short nap after checking in to my hotel and then took a drive around. Certainly is a scenic place - I took a walk along a beautiful beach called the Strand with views across to the mountainous Magnetic Island. Then I took a drive up Castle Hill - a steep rocky mountain which dominates the landscape, towering above the city. I drove past many people walking up and felt a bit lazy but I was tired from flying and have a bit of a cold so I don’t think I would have handled the climb very well. Driving or walking, it’s well worth the effort - the 360 degree views are spectacular! I’ve got a few photos but for some reason flickr is not letting me upload any (something to do with the hotel’s net connection) but here’s a Mobile Me Gallery of today’s photos. Driving down the hill I mostly coasted in neutral and let gravity do the work - not sure if that’s a bad way to drive or not?

Anyway, after a steak dinner and a brief dip in the spa here it’s time for an early night to catch up on some more sleep. First day of Uni classes for me tomorrow since 1999 so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

Well my schedule is officially looking pretty insane the next two months. I had to break the news to Chas, our church music director, last night, that I will be away a fair bit between now and Christmas. Between travel, and hospital on-call weekends and study I’ll be limited in the amount of Sundays I can play, although I’ll still try and pitch in as much as I can (especially since I’ve only just got my new Telecaster guitar, and need to “run it in” a bit more..)

Earlier this year I was feeling a bit of a case of travel withdrawals. After travelling to Africa (3 times) and around the world to the UK and USA in the last two years the prospect of a year with no trips away was not something I relished. I well and truly have caught the travel bug. I even like hanging around airports, hotels etc (Jen would say I’m a bit mental.) Having said that, with Mia being born this year, a break from travel has been the right thing to do.

But in the next 2 months we’ll be making up for lost time. Starting next week - Jen and I (and Mia) are flying to Adelaide for the weekend to celebrate our 10th anniversary. Then two weeks after that I’ll be off to tropical Townsville for 4 days for a course in Travel Medicine as part of my Masters degree. And in November we’ve booked in a family holiday to Tasmania for a week - a place we’ve recently been inspired to visit for the first time. In amidst all that I have uni exams (first is on Monday) and assignments, and hospital cover, and birthday parties, and a home group weekend down south, and much more. So it’s going to be a bit of a roller coaster ride for our family, but hopefully all good. I’ll keep you posted.

Ok time for me to knuckle down and get started studying, before I get too far behind. This is challenging for me in a number of ways :

 

• never done serious university study whilst working full time and having a family before
• never studied externally before - seems harder to find out just exactly what I am required to do. There has been little information forthcoming from the uni thus far
• it’s over 8 years since I’ve been at Uni and the technological landscape has changed considerably. Over the course of my 6 year medical degree in the 90s the internet gradually emerged from being completely non-existent to being a useful, but still quite peripheral, adjunct to our studies. Few students had laptops and they were rarely seen in class.

So in view of the third point especially, does anyone have any advice for me? I sat down this morning to start reading and taking some notes and then wondered if I should actually be putting these notes into my laptop instead of my awful handwriting. Should I be using a simple word processor (eg Word, Pages etc) or is there other software out there which is better suited to study and note taking?? (only Mac software please!)

 

Haven’t blogged a lot here lately, and I doubt that’s going to change much since I officially resume life as a Uni student again next week. I got the course outline for my first unit of my Masters degree last week and I’ll admit I was not enthused. The unit is on Human Health & Environmental Change - basically looking at the effects on climate change on public health and disease as far as I can tell. The thing that I was least impressed with is that the bulk of the assessment for this unit is through a large project/case study - I’ve never been keen on assignments, preferring to get marks through cramming for exams, so this will not be my cup of tea. I’m yet to work out exactly what my weekly study commitment will be. This unit is one of the 5 compulsory core units for the MPH&TM so I don’t have any choice. The other, non-core, unit I will be doing this semester I’m yet to get any information on, but it promises to be much more interesting : Travel Medicine. This is one of the key reasons I’m doing this degree - to give myself another sub-speciality interest, especially if GP obstetric practice was to become unviable (there are constant changes going on in our health system so it’s impossible to say if things will still be the same in another 2 or 5 years time) - and I’ve fixed on Travel Medicine as that interest. This is because I love to travel, find the medical stuff quite interesting, and it also fits well with the medical mission stuff I’ve done over the last 2 years and plan to continue in the future. So that unit should be much more valuable. Part of it involves a 3 day teaching block in tropical Townsville in October which I’m really looking forward to.

So there’s my pre-emptive explanation if I am quiet on the blog front. Paradoxically I’ve also started a new blog for our music team but I’m hoping to get some other contributors on board with that one so I won’t have to carry the load too much. I will continue to use Twitter so at least there will be some updates as to what’s going on with me, and brief comments on various things. I’ve discovered a few interesting medical blogs of late which always makes me feel like I should talk about more medical stuff on here however lack on inspiration and confidentiality concerns (since this is not an anonymous blog) always stymie that. Maybe my studies will provide me with some interesting material?

Anyway patients waiting and I want to get away on time today so I can do some furniture shopping so I must be off.

It’s been over 8 years since I’ve been at Uni, and over 5 years since I’ve done any serious study ( that was for my surgical training) - I’ve done my Obstetrics and GP qualifications in the last 6 years but I wouldn’t rate them as being too strenuous.

Well today I received an email confirming that I have been accepted into Uni next semester (starting July - August). I will be studying part time towards a Masters degree in Public health & tropical medicine (MPH&TM) at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland. For non-Aussies, Townsville is a city in the tropics up on the far north east coast of Australia. It’s diagonally opposite Perth on the map 3391 kilometres away (as a rough guide imagine the distance from LA to Washington DC in the United States). Mostly I’ll be studying at home but will probably have to go over there once or twice a semester for short stints. I guess if you have to travel anywhere for study, a tropical city on the Great Barrier Reef is not a bad choice

As for the degree itself the Master of Public Health & Tropical Medicine covers a range of units relating to medicine in the tropics and the developing world. This will help me on future medical missions like my trips to Uganda over the last couple of years to actually have a more solid knowledge base behind me (instead on just winging it!). Also it means I will be qualified to move more into the field of Travel Medicine as part of general practice here in Australia. If I ever get tired of regular GP work and my obstetrics I could go and work full time in a travel clinic. Short of that it’s definitely an area of practice that I want to build and expand as time goes on. Thirdly this degree would be a useful qualification if I was to ever move into more serious or full time international medical, relief or humanitarian type work. From what I hear it’s actually quite difficult to get jobs with the big aid organisations so if I ever went in that direction this degree would be valuable.

Also it looks like I might be able to get 12 points credit towards the course by virtue of having had over 5 years professional medical experience, which would cut a third off the degree. I wasn’t necessarily expecting that so it will be a big bonus if it works out that way.

Very exciting stuff. I can’t believe I’m so keen to get back to study again. After a 6 year medical degree and another 6 years of postgrad study in surgery, obstetrics, and general practice, I thought it would be a long time before I ventured into medical academia again. But I’m looking forward to it. The only question mark is how I’m going to fit this into my already busy life.