Clinical Exchange in Japan

My name is Jabbar Mohammad and I am a final-year medical student from Lund University in Sweden. I did a clinical clerkship at the Department of Cardiac Surgery at Nagoya University Hospital between September 3rd and September 28th of 2018.

The four weeks that I spent at the Department of Cardiac Surgery were divided between the operation room, ward, intensive care unit, as well as in lectures and seminars. I am extremely glad that I received such a varied program because it enabled me to study and learn cardiac surgery with different perspectives, which was very educational. Also, whenever I had time over, or was waiting for an operation to start, I could go to the excellently-equipped campus library to read and prepare for a particular operation.

All the doctors were extremely welcoming, and they always had time to teach and explain, whether it was going through preoperative CT-scans in the operation room before the operation or teaching me how to suture an anastomosis in the doctors’ office after a long day’s work. Although at times there was a language barrier, the doctors and students were very unwilling to give up and would oftentimes take to pen and paper to explain something. Furthermore, I will forever appreciate the many students and doctors who sat beside me during lectures and meetings to translate to me what was being said.

During my rotation, I had the opportunity to observe a myriad of interesting and challenging conditions and operations. Since Nagoya University Hospital is a tertiary referral hospital with a long tradition in cardiac surgery, it receives many complex and difficult cases, and during my short stay I came across cases such as a total replacement of descending thoracic and abdominal aorta, left-sided cardiac sarcoma and the rather uncommon operation of pulmonary endarterectomy for chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension.

As for the more common operations, I saw a lot of valve and aortic surgery of varying etiology and complexity. The opportunity to observe a large number of these operations gave me a lot of experience in terms of their fundamental principles from a surgical point of view, as well as pre- and postoperative care. Other procedures that I had the opportunity to get a better understanding of were the cardiopulmonary bypass machine and deep hypothermic circulatory arrest.

I am extremely thankful for this opportunity and would like to extend my thanks to everyone at the Department of Cardiac Surgery, with special thanks to Professor Usui, for a very warm welcome. I am equally thankful for the opportunity to experience Japan and its culture during my stay, and I am sure that I will visit this beautiful country sometime in the future.