Sites: Darwin, Australia
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Location: Darwin, Australia Facility: Royal Darwin Hospital Site Preceptor: Nicholas Anstey, MD, PhD; Staff Specialist in Infectious Diseases and General Medicine; Head, International Health Division; Principal Research Fellow, Menzies School of Health Research |
Background: Darwin is a vibrant city of about 90,000 people with Aborigines making up about 30% of the overall population. There are well over 30 types of Aboriginal languages and hundreds of dialects, yet English is almost universally understood. An aboriginal liaison officer is available in the hospital to help with translations and organizing family meetings. Drs. Bart Currie, Nick Anstey, and Malcolm McDowell at the Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH) support visiting Duke residents. With 345 beds, RDH is the primary acute hospital for all of the Northern Territory, and is essentially the only tertiary care/specialist hospital for several thousand kilometers. |
Clinical Opportunities: For residents in general medicine, there are four ward teams that admit and care for medicine patients at RDH including a general medicine/infectious diseases team. Each team consists of a consultant (attending physician), registrar or senior resident, a junior resident and one to two medical students. The size of a resident's service varies typically between 10 and 30 patients, although it can be as large as 50. It is also possible to work with the ID consult service, which functions both as a consult service and as the primary team for a subset of inpatients admitted purely for ID issues. Residents are encouraged to take advantage of the opportunity to accompany Malcolm McDowell from the Division of Infectious Diseases on short trips into remote Aboriginal communities to staff clinics. |
Research: To date, no research efforts have been undertaken at Darwin. For an overview of ongoing research projects at the Menzies School of Health Research by Nick Anstey and Bart Currie visit: http://www.menzies.edu.au. |