Clinical Exchange in Japan

Before I went to Japan, I didn’t really know what to expect. I have a couple of friends who visited before and everyone had a great time but I didn’t know anyone who spent more than two weeks in the country. Because of all the stories my friends had told me and having read about other students’ experiences, my expectations were quite high.

Neurosurgery

In the neurosurgical department I spent most of the time in the operating room observing surgeries. They have different teams performing different kinds of neurosurgery every day of the week. For example, I got to see a lot of tumor resections, bypass operations for moya-moya disease, spine surgery, functional neurosurgery and endoscopic surgeries.

The surgeons were incredibly nice to me and included me as much as they could in the surgeries. They also arranged so that I could practice microsurgical technique and invited me to a neurosurgical conference held in Nagoya.

Cardiac Surgery

In the cardiosurgery clinic, most of the time was also spent in the operating room. The days usually started with rounds in the surgical ICU and then the preparations for that day’s surgery started. I often had the chance to scrub in on these surgeries, which was really educational. Examples of surgeries I saw are CABG, valve replacements and operations of thoracic aortic aneurysms.

Here too, the surgeons were incredibly nice to me and among other things they invited me to a cardiothoracic conference in Kobe for two days.

Both of these rotations were very educational and maybe best of all was to meet the doctors and the Japanese medical students. I became really good friends with some students and we spent a lot of our free time together. For example, one weekend we went on a road trip up to Matsumoto in the Japanese alps.

All in all, I can really recommend studying in Nagoya; it’s a really nice city with incredibly nice people and a great university hospital!