Clinical Exchange in Japan

“He that travels far knows much.”, said Thomas Fuller. Nagoya isn’t a really far place from Taiwan, but the one-month-experience there surely helped me broaden my horizons. The nice experience started from the warm greeting by Ms. Kobayashi, the coordinator of international affairs in Nagoya University. Everything went smoothly with her detailed explanation about the application and the whole courses.

In the hematology department, I was welcomed by Dr. Ushijima’s politeness and a compact schedule for the two weeks. 40% of patients here are diagnosed with AML, another 30% with malignant lymphoma, and there is also multiple myeloma, hemophilia……etc. I was expected to follow different doctors every day and observe how they take care of the patients in the ward. Besides that, I was allowed to write my own progress notes for two patients by myself after the doctors qualified my Japanese communication skills. The treatment course and their side effects were imprinted into my mind as I visited the patients daily. It was also a good and inspiring time to chat with the patients about how they think about the medical system in Japan, and how the disease changed their life. I also had the chance to present the cases in the evening meeting, which again helped me a lot in evaluating the patients’ condition and reviewing the treatment plans.

The first impression for the pathology department was astonishing since the office and the sample-processing space were so tidy, which is totally different from those battlefields in our hospital. Every morning, doctors here would make the gross sections for the sample. Since the samples are already processed by the surgeons, pathologists here could do an efficient job and spend more time on reviewing slides and discussing. Professor Nakamura, the head of the department, are a well-known pathologist expert in lymphoma; some chapters about lymphoma in the WHO classification of tumors are written by him. On top of his amazing thinking process in analyzing slides of hematologic disorders, his diligence in doing research and the thorough attitude I observed during the CPC were admirable.

Even months after the program have finished, what I’ve experienced and learned in Nagoya still remains fresh and impressive. Doctors there could communicate smoothly in English and were all willing to instruct and discuss about medical problems. They also shared many invaluable experiences and ideas about those obstacles I might face in the future as a doctor. It is my honor to have the chance to do an elective course in one of the most prestigious hospitals for hematology and lymphoma pathology in Japan. I would like to thank all the doctors, everyone in the office of international affairs, and those who had supported me in Taiwan for the brilliant clerkship in Nagoya University, and hope to meet again in the future.