First Week in Bangor

Hello!

I’ve been in Bangor for a week now and the time has flown by! It’s been a bit of a whirlwind, but I’ve got myself settled and everything is going really well.

My first challenge was the journey up here. I only returned from my summer holiday 2 days before I had to leave for uni so I had a pretty quick turnaround with lots of last minute packing. The drive up to Bangor took me 8 hours! The novelty of driving my own car for the first time meant that it was still exciting and the best part of the journey was the last half hour when I started to see the coast and mountains of North Wales which looked beautiful in the evening sun!

Our first day included a few induction talks as well as a tour around Bangor University. We had the chance to meet our lovely Clinical Senior Lecturer Dr Ffion Williams. She will be helping us out this year with all of our lectures and tutorials, as well as anything else we need! We also met Jo, a wonderful woman who is in charge of all of our admin stuff. She seemed to know everything about everything and was incredibly helpful, from organising our work rooms and printing to giving us restaurant and activity suggestions!

In the afternoon we had some free time and so we took the opportunity to explore the town centre in Bangor. It is obviously much smaller than Cardiff, however the high street had a good selection of shops so we were happy!

On Tuesday we had more induction talks, this time more specifically about the CARER project such as what a normal week will look like and the different assessments and projects we will need to complete. We then had a talk from Dr. Strasser, who has been involved in similar projects to CARER in Australia and Canada, which was interesting.

The next 2 days were our chance to visit our GPs! I have been placed at a lovely GP surgery in a town called Bethesda, which is a 10 minute drive south of Bangor and is surrounded by beautiful countryside. It’s a relatively small practice with only 4 GPs. Everyone at the practice was really welcoming. I spent my time observing different GP and practice nurse clinics, and already I’ve seen lots of interesting patients. As I get more confident and comfortable at the practice there should be chance for me to do histories and examinations of patients myself, as well as going on home visits!

On the Friday we had our induction to Ysbyty Gwynedd, the local hospital which we will be placed at for a few weeks during the year. The undergraduate centre seemed really nice and all of the staff were lovely and very helpful! When we finished at the hospital we decided to all take a trip out together to Angelsey!  We visited South Stack lighthouse which was pretty cool and then we explored the island a bit more, coming across several more beautiful places. It was so much fun!

Overall I’ve had a great first week and I am really enjoying living in Bangor. I am really excited for the rest of the year!

Ella x