Happy New Year

Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.
Proverbs 16:3

This is the verse from today's 'this day's thought' email that I get. I thought it was an awesome prayer for the coming year - amen.

Over the past 3 days since the Christmas weekend the Orthopaedic service at Worcester where I work has put on x4 as many theatre lists each day to reduce the huge number of patients requiring operations for their various broken limbs, (all the elective lists were cancelled). I think we've finally gotten over the worst, but I hear there is worse icy weather to come - at least the threat of snow over the past week did not become a reality in Worcestershire, a blessed relief for the already stretched to breaking point NHS!

I have my interim validation meeting on Tuesday, which is a meeting by my year supervisor on how I'm doing at work. He'll look at my portfolio of procedures and reflective work I've done since August and give me a score which will help toward my application for Speciality training. I need to do quite a bit of work on it this weekend to get it up to scratch though, I'm one of those kinds of people that saves all my work up and does it last minute rather than spacing it out and doing a little each day! I've had various comments from my seniors about taking a year out of NHS training to go to Malawi and do My tropical Medicine course. Most are enthusiastic and say it'll be a great opportunity, but some have said that if I'm serous about a career in Surgery I should apply this year.

Too late now anyway - applications have closed for working next August! I decided last month to take a chance and definitely do a year out. I really believe that this is what God has planned for me. If I really work hard out in Malawi and get plenty of experience and do some research that gets published, surely I'll prove for applications that I'm serious about an Orthopaedic job.

Anyway, here's a job list for the coming year:
1. Apply for a place on diploma of tropical medicine course (Liverpool/London)
2. Apply for 1st part of Surgical exams for April's exam
3. Post GMC certificate to Malawi for approval to work in Malawi
4. Book Malawi Flights
5. Book onto ATLS course for June time
6. Book some more driving lessons and pass test!