Monday September 4th

welcome, NHS introduction, health care systems

First thing in the morning, we had a welcome from Carolyn, who is the course manager, as well as Colin and Peter. Afterwards we had a tour of the campus and an English test to measure our level of English.

First contact with the NHS

In the afternoon, we first had a lesson with Kevin, where we talked about the English Health System, particularly the NHS (National Health Service) and more specifically Southampton City Primary Care Trust. We also made comparisons between the Austrian and the English health care systems. One particular difference that caught our eye was that English GPs (general practitioner) get payed entirely according to the number of patients on their list. This was our first contact with the NHS. We realised how different the challenges are that the NHS may face compared to the Austrian health system; for instance, London has the same population as all of Austria.

The next lesson was with Trish, and we spent it preparing and delivering short group presentations about various periods in the history of the NHS. We learned that the NHS was founded in 1948 and has since gone through significant changes due to developments in medicine and technology as well as organisational structure.

We ended the day at the Language Centre, where we started to work on a webquest about the NHS.