18/09/07-20/09/07
After LA’s motorways, Stanford came as a very pleasant surprise. A university campus endowed by a 19th Century Industrialist, it is set amid parkland that is given an Antipodean feel by the huge numbers of feral eucalyptus trees (one was introduced & spread itself freely) and vineyards. The hospital is within the university campus, the latter being based around a central quad that might remind one of Oxbridge were it not built in an Italianate style with a Floretine Basilica. The whole thing has been rebuilt on a couple of occasions after major earthquakes, the
We spent our time with Bill Maloney, Stuart Goodman & James “Hutch” Huddlestone. We were made extremely welcome, even during the 2 hour “Grand Round” that had been set up for us to comment on difficult cases & give 30 minute lectures each.
The rest of the time was spent in theatre with Dr Maloney (Epoch stem, in which he also was involved on the design team) and x-linked poly, campus tour, research meeting with Dr Goodman (intra-cellular messengers for osteoblast/clast precursors) preop-planning & arthritis service meetings.
Stanford also managed to win with the paperwork. Aside from the usual signing of multiple documents to allow us into theatre, we had to agree to a 4-page disclaimer regarding the content of our lectures. It’s nice to know that the NHS still has some catching up to do in terms of bureaucracy & political correctness