The British are coming!

Every other week we have clinical skills lectures given by English doctors or misters (that’s what they call their surgeons). To use an expression of my mother’s - “it’s a hoot” to listen to them talk. The Mister opened up his lecture with a rather unPC joke:

‘How can you tell if a Chinaman is jaundiced?’

We were all laughing at the fact that he actually said it (thankfully there weren’t any ‘Chinamen’ present in the lecture). Anyways, some other great words and phrases that made me swallow my giggles during lecture were:

- calling genitalia ‘bits’, as in ‘covering the bits’

- patients coming to you with their ‘woes’

- something about ‘having the vicker over for tea’

Along with funny English expressions, I absolutely love it when I see words spelled in the English way - like foetus, anaemia, or haemoglobin (I know it's kind've of weird and nerdy, but it gets me a little excited).

We also seem to be finding out the truth about ‘percussing’ during the physical examination, which was so vehemently stressed in Grenada. It sounds like it’s rarely used in UK/US. Perhaps one day they’ll drop it from the teaching……kind of like how doctors don’t taste their patient’s urine anymore…..because there are waaaaaaaaaay more effective and accurate tests to diagnose. But as mentioned by the doctor – being here in a place where they do not have access to a lot of the fancy equipment and tests, is a great place to build a strong foundation of the basics.