First month working in New Plymouth

Work

I’ve been there a month and so far the team is very welcoming (aren’t they always at the beginning). The work is varied with respect to all the new cancers I’m learning about, but a bit samey as to the nature of my duties. Generally we just review patients in clinic before they have chemotherapy. No severely unwell inpatients to look after and no acute assessment to do. “Unwell” patients all get sent to A+E, and then to the general medics.

As for work volume; they seem to be struggling to find me enough to do. No doubt things will pick up, but so far on a typical day in Taranaki I might review 4-5 patients when in the UK I would expect to review 20. Or up to 30 if it was all telephone clinics. Initially I thought “well this is nice!” But quickly I reversed myself: “well this is boring”.

I’m sure quite soon people will start giving me more to do and I’ll become comfortably busy. Getting some variety into the working day will be more tricky but I think I can engineer it.

Housing

My cottage is situated 5 miles from the hospital and when I run the route is mostly along the coastal path. One morning I (reluctantly) had to shoo a seal off the path or I would’ve been late.

It rains a lot here, especially in the mornings. On the bright side, running to work in the dark with the wind-swept rain driving into your eyes does help to wake one up in the morning. To back up my claim about the rainfall:

New Plymouth in July 2021: 121ml

[Ref Taranaki Regional Council]

Bangor in January (average since 1965): 75ml

[Ref UK Met Office]

The Town

New Plymouth has a pleasant sandy coastline and although the sea still has a nip to it, it’s warmer here in the winter than than the sea off Kent in summer. The New Zealanders are still waiting for it to warm up though, and they look at me like I’m bonkers.

New Zealanders

Heading into work passing people on the street very often I’m greeted with a cheery “good morning!” To begin with I thought it must be someone from the hospital who knew me, but no, that’s just the way complete strangers address each other when on their way to work.

So far my patient’s have been pleasingly good natured, and remarkably trusting. Since I’m meeting everyone for the first time there’s usually a discussion about what brought me here and what I was doing in the UK, so I take the opportunity to tell them “well, my training is in haematology, but I hope to pick up Oncology as I go along. You’re my first patient to have metastatic pancreatic cancer so this is jolly exciting for me”. Not one of them so far has said “get out you idiot and find me a real oncologist!”

For the most part, people drive to the speed limit and cross the road only when the green man gives permission. They leave the pub to go home at 8pm, but in their defense a lot of the pubs close at 8pm. Parkruns by contrast start at 8am (for the benefit of you non-runners, in the UK parkrun is always at 9am).

On the topic of driving, I spend a few days in Palmerston North, and for the trip I was loaned a hospital car (corolla-something-hybrid). As an aside, I can’t fault John Cleese’s summation after he toured there with the Pythons:

“If you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick. We stayed in a little motel, the weather was grotty, the theatre was a nasty shape and the audience was very strange to play to. We had a thoroughly, bloody miserable time there and we were so happy to get out.

Just occasionally when you’re on a tour you get a town that’s particularly depressing. When you do have that the best thing to do is to hate it and to enjoy hating it because then you don’t get depressed. And all of us at that particular occasion and at that particular time fell in hate with Palmerston North and although it kicked up a fuss at the time there was a second slew of letters that came to us from people in Palmerston North saying, “You’re absolutely right. It is a dump”. So the opinion in Palmerston North itself was divided 50/50.”

Driving through another storm I noted how easilly this car overtook compared to good-old Boxer, for whom every overtaking maneuver required some preparation, a bit of downhill and a long run-up. A few days after my return, sitting at my desk, I was informed that all hospital cars are tracked, “please see attached itemized list of your speeding offences”. This was from my manager, not the police. The email went on “there will be no further action since you were unaware that you were being tracked”. That’s puzzling I thought. No further action. Has there been any action? Perhaps informing me of my crimes, and hence causing me remorse, is action enough? I considered replying (as Lord Sumption points out. Do listen to his excellent Reith lectures: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00057m8) that there is no moral obligation to obey the law. On the other hand, to covertly track an employee’s movements, outside of their working hours, and then present them with a list of their misdeeds, well that seems a bit murky. IF, I’d visited a series of burlesque houses on my way to Palmerston North, my managers would now know it.

In New Zealand it is impossible to find, or to order online, red or pink grapefruit. I used to eat one of these a day at about 11am. New Zealand grown white grapefruit are available, and they are revolting.

That’s all for now. Enjoy your freedom while I crack on with the latest lockdown. They take the rules seriously here too. I’ve seen people wearing a mask whilst driving when there was no one else in the car. I guess you can’t be too careful.