Ladies and gentlemen, our dream has finally become true : the venerable University of Malta Medical School has finally moved (well, started moving, but that's good enough) to the brand-spanking-new Mater Dei Hospital !!!
The first lectures were held at MDH today, tutorials will soon follow, and with a little bit of luck we will soon get lockers there, so we won't have to carry our massive copies of Kumar or Burkitt with us to the patients' bedside (occasionally placing them on their beds, as a minimal contribution towards the spread of MRSA to the new hospital :-P ).
A pleasant surprise was the parking situation : in St.Luke's you had to sell your soul for a parking space, while in MDH you have 666 places to choose from, most of which seem to be empty before 07.30.
But there was also an unpleasant surprise : most areas are access-protected and it is said that we won't be given access cards for them. If this is true, we will constantly be at the mercy of the nursing staff to access wards and theatres. This will be a huge obstacle to our training, and may also cause serious inequality issues, since some students have friends or relatives working at MDH and others don't...
I really hope that the Medical School administration and MMSA have understood this problem and are already looking into solutions... And I also hope that some day both the former and -especially- the latter will start regularly and reliably informing students about what's going on... I'm sick and tired of learning things through the grapevine !!!
[UPDATE : I should take the last comment about MMSA back, since they did send us a very informative email on the issue earlier today. Apparently, there will be clerks at each ward that are supposed to do the gatekeeper's work. And they will be obliged to open for us, as long as we flash our ID tags at them. Fair enough, and I am starting to like MDH even more now :-D ]
