Clinical Exchange in Japan

I am honored that I got the opportunity to spend my exchange semester in Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine. After receiving the admission letter, I prepared the materials and applied for Erasmus scholarship. We were the only two exchange students from abroad at Nagoya University hospital during the beginning of our stay, later other international students from different countries joined. The Japanese culture is different from our European culture and people respect the differences of opinions.

The International Office was easy to find and were helpful with all requests. The administration and faculty were well prepared and were helpful upon the arrival. The international student association made my arrival and whole stay in Nagoya great. We organized many social events and trips every weekend. The events were for all students resulting in us internationals being integrated with Japanese culture.

The courses were relatively intensive and distributed into three months. In each month, we visited different departments. We started with Neurology, where we got a really structured schedule plan consisting of many lectures and ward rounds, as well as assisting in the outpatient clinic. The second months we joined the OB/GYN department, where we saw many difficult cases as well as entering the operation room the first time in Japan, where the atmosphere is very different from the operation rooms in Austria. In the 3rd month we began our clinical rotation at Ophthalmology for 2 weeks. Here, we had the opportunity to see many operations including very difficult cases. The last department we visited was Otorhinolaryngology, where we also were most of the time in the operation rooms. My highlight at the University hospital was the simulation center, which is a fully accredited state-of-the-art medical training facility, where we got the opportunity to simulate many operations and procedures using very advanced high tech equipment. All departments also organized conferences and debates frequently. Everyone was very inviting, nice and treated us very respectfully.