Clinical Exchange in Japan

Studying in Japan has been such a wonderful journey, especially when I got the chance to participate in the clinical clerkship program in Nagoya University for 3 months. This provides me a precious opportunity to learn the medical difference between Japan and Taiwan, such as the hospital management, medical insurance system, disease prevalence and so on. During my visit, I have been to 4 departments and would like to briefly express my thoughts:

Ophthalmology

My instructor is Dr. Ueno. He arranged a well-organized schedule so I could run through every aspect of the ophthalmology department in 2 weeks. I joined the lectures with local 5th grade students and learned about corneal diseases, retinal diseases and how to use the examination equipment such as slit-lamp microscope and fundoscope. The physicians also let me take a glance at how they interact with the patients in the outpatient clinic. On Tuesday and Friday, I went to the operation theater to observe how the teachers perform surgery to treat cataract and strabismus patients.

Orthopedics

The orthopedic department is divided into 7 specialties: Spine, Rheumatoid, Hand, Shoulder & Knee, Tumor, Pediatric and Hip. My instructor Dr. Hirai arranged a schedule for me so I could observe each specialty’s operation during my round. Every specialty performs the operation differently, so the equipment and the time required for the operation varied. For example, I have seen tumor removal, which took about 40 minutes and right arm myoplasty that took about 8 hours. Among the operations I have seen, what impressed me most is the rotation plasty. It is an operation indicated for osteosarcoma. By replacing the knee joint with the ankle joint, the patient can maintain the function of walking with prosthesis.

Hematology

My instructors are Dr. Nishida and Dr. Hayagawa. I was assigned to different doctors and followed their daily duty. It was an impressive experience because diseases sometimes come with hematologic complications. So doctors often need a consultation from the hematologic department. Thus, I’ve been to the neurosurgery department to observe how to confirm the patient doesn’t tend to bleed during surgery, and obstetrics department to observe how to perform peripheral blood stem cell harvest by apheresis in order to treat the choriocarcinoma patient. Furthermore, I learned with the local 5th grade students. We attended lectures together and studied how to diagnose hematologic tumor by looking at bone marrow slides with microscopes. Moreover, we were separated into groups and given a patient to follow up. We checked the electrons health record and learn about the patient’s history and illness. In the summary section, we presented the patient’s report to the teacher.

Neurology

The 4-week round in Neurology was tough but meaningful. Professor Sobue gave me a goal to achieve: Run through every aspect of neurology department and take 2 patients’ health record. So, in the morning, I usually had a lecture with the doctors to learn about the neurologic diseases and the research they were doing. Then, in the afternoon, I studied in the ward with the fellow doctors and try to communicate with the patients to learn about their disease history. Also, I went to the neurologic examination room to observe how autonomic function test, electromyography and electroencephalography are performed. So, in the summary section, I presented the patients’ reports with physical examinations that I actually performed and the image studies that I participated in.

Overall, I had a great time studying in Nagoya university hospital and would like to express my gratefulness to the office of international affairs for so much help during my rotation. I would especially like to thank Professor Kasuya and Dr. Kondo for their warm welcome and kind assistance. It has been such a fruitful experience to learn in Nagoya University that I highly recommend to medical students who are searching for clinical exchange opportunities.

Clinical exchange orientation with other foreign medical students

Group photo with the orthopedics department

Group photo with Professor Hasegawa and the 5th grade medical students of Nagoya University

Photo with Professor Sobue