RickInOz

The question asked of me by the director of our unit a couple of days ago. I’m not sure if he was fishing for potential Adelaide intensivist specialists, vaguely interested in a supervisory role or just making conversation.

Either way, it got me thinking about my career and prospects for the next year or two. I’ll be “time expired”, in other words completed the mandatory training time requirements for the college by next February. But, with my formal project still in progress, won’t be able to claim my fellowship and hence specialist status for a while longer. There’s also the aspect of personal comfort. I still don’t feel ready to make the leap to consultant and that more experience would do me good.

So, to give me a little more breathing space I have started to formally line up work for the following year. From February to August I had already been granted an extension of my contract at the RAH ICU. Previously I had thought about then doing a year of retrieval medicine, but have subsequently decided that 12 months is too long away from mainstream hospital practice so have now applied just for 6 months. That post is provisionally mine, but not confirmed yet. I will press them soon as failure to get the job will mean a hasty search round the city.

Then, I have been granted a position as the Flinders Medical Centre in the south of the city. This hosts another busy, large ICU comparable to the RAH. The main difference is the patient mix with Flinders taking cardiac, thoracic, liver, obstetric and paediatric patients. This should present a good challenge and complete my exposure to the full gamut of critical care.

That will see me through to August 2011, and hopefully by then I will have specialist status, permanent residency and be ready to earn the big bucks as a consultant. But then again, maybe I’ll still feel more registrar time is necessary. The consultant jobs will still keep coming up from time-to-time, so there is no rush other than for the financial gains, and to actually get some weekends off.