Students of the Faculty of Medicine undertake international mobility for the first time

A total of twelve fifth-year students in the UVic-UCC Faculty of Medicine completed their internship abroad last week. They were the first students in the faculty to do an international mobility internship, as the first cohort has now reached the fifth year in the bachelor's degree course in Medicine, at which point students can apply for outgoing mobility. This training opportunity is part of the Faculty of Medicine's Internationalisation Plan, and its objective is to raise the centre's profile around the world, establish international links and for students to have the opportunity to train in hospitals in other countries and to get to know different healthcare systems, as well as to acquire personal skills and learn a language.

Some of the twelve students did their curricular internships within the framework of the Erasmus+ traineeships programme (in European Union countries and eligible for obtaining an Erasmus scholarship), while others did them as international internships. In both cases, the stays abroad are for a period of two months, according to the stipulations of the programme of study of the bachelor's degree in Medicine at UVic-UCC. These internships are part of the Clinical Practice III course, and can be done in hospitals all over the world by virtue of the agreements that the Faculty of Medicine signs with these institutions.

A different experience

The first internships abroad took place in three European countries and one country in South America. Specifically, four students did their internships at San Salvatore de l'Aquila Hospital (Italy), two students at San Raffaele Hospital (Italy), three students at Clinical Hospital Dubrava (Croatia), one student at Heidelberg University Hospital (Germany) and two students at the CES University clinic in Medellin (Colombia). The forecast for the next academic year, 2022-2023, is that the number of students in the Faculty of Medicine doing international internships will be more than double the number this year, taking the high levels of demand into account.

During the internship, the students do clinical rotations, and by doing so find out about the different services and areas in foreign health centres at first hand. Clàudia Castro and Clara Tintoré, fifth-year students who did their internship at the General Surgery Service of the Clinical Hospital Dubrava (Croatia), said that their stay there "was very enriching as we were able to see the differences compared to the Catalan health system."

Laura Sampol, another fifth-year student, did the international mobility internship at the San Salvatore Hospital in L'Aquila (Italy), where she worked on a rotating basis in the Digestology, Internal Medicine and Neurosurgery departments. "I was helping on the front line, working side by side with doctors and surgeons," she explains. She believes that her stay has enabled her to reconsider her professional future, and showed her that neurosurgery is a specialist area in which she is very interested. Regarding the contrast between the Catalan and Italian healthcare systems, Sampol considers that "the differences are vast. The way the healthcare system is organised in Italy is very different, it is inefficient compared to Catalonia, and it is not digitalised."

"Having the opportunity to do an internship at the Department of Neurology at the Kopfklinik of the Universität Heidelberg over the last two months has been quite a privilege. I've always wanted to go abroad to do my medical specialisation, and thanks to this experience I've been able to confirm that I want to go to Germany," says the student Libertad Garrido. She says that doing an academic exchange is always enriching: "It helps you value the things that work in our environment, and stimulates your curiosity."

"During these internships I was delighted to discover that more than half of the medical workforce in German university hospitals is made up of resident doctors and final year students. That creates an atmosphere of debate, and facilitates constant learning," says Garrido. On the other hand, she was surprised by the lack of digitisation in the German health system, "which in some ways slows down routine administrative hospital tasks, but at the same time encourages doctors to spend time and effort on getting to know and examine each new patient thoroughly." Garrido is very happy with the support she received from the International Department of the Faculty of Medicine, and she encourages all students on other courses to take advantage of this opportunity and go abroad to learn.