Academy Guide: Devizes

Devizes is NOT as awful as it sounds. It is a small psychiatric hospital with two wards. The hospital is a mile outside of the Devizes centre.

Getting there

There is NO train station in Devizes, (though there is one in Chippenham which is a 25 minute drive) so driving is your best bet. It takes about an hour and a half to get there in good traffic!

If you don’t have a car though – no problem: taxis which are FREE OF CHARGE can be booked at the hospital reception, to pick you up from the house you stay in to take you wherever you need for the day! If you do have a car – petrol is reimbursed for any travel you have to do around Devizes. No outpatient clinics take place at the hospital so lots of your time will be spent outside the hospital, so make the most of the free services!

Accomodation

Accomodation is provided in the form of two houses next door to each other which each sleep three. There will be a maximum of six lucky people being sent to Devizes for each unit. If you are less than six, you could end up having the rooms filled by SHOs…

Each house has a living room with a 25inch TV (with the licence paid for already), 3 sofas (one each!), a dining room and a well stocked kitchen. Everything is provided, right down to washing up liquid. There’s also free washing machines in each house and a lovely cleaner that visits every couple of weeks.

The only downside to the house is that the phone signal is pretty bad and half your phone calls will cut out. Only certain areas of the houses managed to get signal (you’ll work them out) and there is no internet in the house.

One thing that is fantastic is that you can use the address of the accommodation to apply for the free tickets to Radio 1’s One Big Weekend event in the summer as the houses fall into the catchment area!

The Hospital and Teaching

The hospital consists of two wards. Each student is assigned an individual consultant and an SHO. You attend their weekly ward round in the hospital and go to their outpatient clinics. There is NO canteen in the hospital, so you either have to go into town for food or pop back to the house (only 5 minutes away).

There is a library in Devizes with a good range of psychiatry books and journals. The librarian who works in the mornings is really helpful and an excellent point of contact for the psych SSC’s. There are 3 computers with internet in the library, but the library closes at 5pm! After that you have to get a key from one of the wards to use the Doctors’ Mess.

Devizes itself

Devzes centre is about a 15 minute walk from the houses. There’s a Morrisons and Sainsburys in town that can be found easily. There are loads of pubs in Devizes although they are all ‘very local’ with either youngsters who are underage or old men. All the pubs are easy to find as Devizes isn’t big at all. Lots of them have Karaoke nights (beware!) and one even has a dance floor that stays open until 2 AM (shock shock horror!).

Have fun – I did!