After months of trawling around the NHS on my Orientation, I finally started my first placement at Sunderland PCT. Must admit I’d been looking forward to actually getting down to some real work after playing the role of perpetual tourist on a medical safari.

For those of you that just googled ‘Medical tourism’ – that isn’t what I was up to! (That’s next summer...)

So far I’ve been in Financial Services (the creditor side to those in the know) and have been punching invoices into Oracle and scanning invoices for filing – apparently we’ve only just gone digital in the process.

Doesn’t sound very interesting...until you get a £6.9m invoice.

After my first week of work, the powers that be decided that us Finance trainees weren’t cut out for work in such long bursts and had us sent off to another week at college. This time we were covering the material for Economics (C4), the fourth of five certificate level exams.

I’m exempt (just putting it out there) and had covered most of the material in my Economics AS level and degree. That said, the material was quite dense and it’s definitely a subject that will make your eyes weary.

Apologies to any of the Economic purists out there, but as far as I’m concerned the best thing the economist has produced is Kal’s cartoon.

Ok, I liked Freakonomics too – but that’s as far as I’ll go!

Highlights of the week included my quizzing the lecturer on her conviction that a minimum wage causes unemployment to rise. When I asked if there wasactually evidence of this she directed me to the graph that proved it.

Missing my point slightly me thinks.

Apart from my group’s world class presentation on National Income Accounting and my enthusiastic contribution to its success (spot the sarcasm), the only other remaining incident of note was the rousing debate on the Euro on the final day.

Basically, me and a fellow NHS graduate had an argument about the pros and cons of the UK entering the single currency, while everyone else in the class sat there willing us to shut up so they could go home and escape the Economic web that had been spun around them.

I feel sorry for the Philosophy graduate in the room.

Until next time...