Placement Day 1 (again)

1st day of my new placement (placement 6 of 7) and I’m on an acute neuro ward. Lot’s of Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Brian tumours, Spinal surgery, RTAs, Motor Neurone Disease and numerous other disgusting conditions and injuries you wouldn’t wish on anyone. I can’t say I was overly looking forward to it but I certainly wasn’t dreading it as much as I have with some of the others and I also have the plus points of coming back for a long weekend over my birthday and the summer to look forward to. Anyway I arrived this morning to find I am in a team of women (Physio is a profession that has been dominated by women, particularly in the NHS only recently beginning to change). Sometimes this can have its plus points, a gentle bit of flirting, sometimes even looked after as the only male on the staff but other times it can be bad, very bad. I fear this is going to be one of those times. Today my supervisor who I quite simply have nothing in common with at all made me follow her around like a puppy watching her do things ‘the right way’ soooo infuriating. At break she said, we don’t mix in with the other physios in the staff room we generally all come down to the neuro room to have a catch up as it’s better in here with less distractions and the tea and biscuits are free. Lovely I thought (as I do like my tea) except I will be missing out on one of the only times of my day I can escape them, talk to other people including other staff I actually get on with and students. The conversation topics in the 20 min break covered the following topics and I swear there was nothing else mentioned and I’m not making this up:
· This is everyone on the neuro team (meet Linda, Barbara, Shirley, Denise……..) 30seconds
· Dirty Dancing 6minutes
· Linda’s new blue dress with a big bow 5minutes
· Shirley’s hen do 6minutes
· Men suck 2 ½ minutes
In the men suck conversation topic they commented that the last male student they had with them used to get a paper and sit in the corner of the room on his own because he disliked the conversations. They then continued to slag him off saying how he never made an effort to integrate and they enjoyed giving him a poor mark.
So tonight along with research into polyneuropathies and my brain anatomy I shall also be reading Heat and OK cover to cover so as to ‘integrate’ tomorrow! Oh the joys of physio!