Sydney

Westmead Hospital, Sydney

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The hospital
Westmead Hospital, Sydney, is one of the largest hospitals in New South Wales, and is also world-renowned for its transplantation programme. The director of the programme (and my supervisor) is Professor Jeremy Chapman, an expatriate Brit. His team consists of 2 surgeons, 4 nephrologists, 2 transplant physicians, and approximately 10-15 allied health professionals and trainees. Westmead has set a number of benchmarks, being the first centre in Australia to perform a simultaneous kidney-pancreas transplant (now being done routinely by the team).

What I did...
About half my time was spent in the clinical setting: watching transplants, attending departmental seminars, ward work, as well as taking part in transplant and nephrology clinics, where I found my time best spent. This was because I was encouraged to undertake the consultation personally, with the supervising doctor either watching, or being presented to afterwards, before seeing the patient himself. The other half of my time was spent attached to the adjacent Centre for Kidney Research, undertaking a meta-analysis with the Cochrane Renal Group, of renal transplantation drug trials since 2000. The data analysis is still ongoing, but ultimately will highlight the inconsistent methodology used in assessing immunosuppressant efficacy post-transplant.

Both teams made me feel very welcome, encouraging me to offer opinions & suggest plans for problems encountered. I gained a lot of confidence during my time here, both in dealing with common post-transplant complications (both early and late), and in managing data collection, analysis, & storage from nearly 200 journal articles.

Outside the hospital
In my time away from the hospital, I was able to visit the Blue Mountains (approximately a 2 hour train journey from central Sydney), as well as attending 'surf school' in north New South Wales - a highly enjoyable (if very tiring and painful!) weekend. I was able to visit all the sights of Sydney, including the Opera House (the bar of which became a regular meeting point with other Oxfordians, with its view across the harbour to the famous bridge), Manly & Bondi Beaches, and the Royal Botanical Gardens. I became a supporter of the Sydney Kings basketball team (watching them play live at least four times), & I was able to attend both the Chinese New Year celebrations (the largest outside of China) and the Sydney Mardi Gras.

Thus it was with great sadness that I left the cosmopolitan life of Sydney behind, and travelled the 5000km (and 21 hours back in time, due to the date line) to the sedentary lifestyle of the Cook Islands.