Testimonial from Incoming Students

Yassin Almassy (Norway)

4th year medical student

Internal medicine, M. Djamil Hospital, Padang, Indonesia

My baseline motivation for going on an exchange is the desire to my expand horizon and to get an understanding of global health and healthcare issues in the world today. I’m seeking to get new impulses and understand the challenges from different point of views, and the best thing to do is to get a first hand experience on the realities. I looked upon the IFMSA exchange program as an golden possibility to do so.

Where and why?

I did 3 weeks (15.06.09 - 04.07.09) at department of internal medicine at M. Djamil Hospital, in Padang on West Sumatra, Indonesia.. I chose Indonesia as my destination partly because of it’s location and its diversity with lot of intressting cultural and environmental differences, but also because I waned to see and experience the tropical infection diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and so on that we hardly get in touch with at home.

Board, lodging and the hospital days

I was with 3 other friends and medical students from Norway and we where kindly placed in two different but really nice host families with great hospitality and love. I shared a room with Adam, my study colleague from Oslo and we were provided really nice traditional breakfast every morning with sate, nasi goreng. Our host was one of the recidents in same departement we were. So we were quite happy about that and also the fact the we all had the same schedule and same driver to the hospital which was a 10min drive from the house. I appreciated very much the fact living in a host famliy which gave me close contact with the way of life, culture and people of West Sumatra!

The days at the at hospital started formally 7.30 AM with all the doctors, recidents and some students gathered for an adacemic lecture session and disscusion given by a couple of the residents. This was mostly done in Bahasa Indonesia, occasionally in English. Intresting review and discussion on different intresting internal medicine cases such as chronic viral hepatitis,cerebral malaria, complication of poorly controlled diabetes that we seldom see in Norway. Warm and traditional lunch provided by the local comitee at the hospital cafeteria. The days ended often at 2PM at the cardiac ICU with our resident friends Fadil, Yanni and Ronny where we examined, discussed tratment and management of patients with acute MI and CHF with the attendings.

We were given a doctor each as supervisor and a schedule for the clerckship by the head of the department that gave us the chance to see many subdepartments of internal medicine such as gastroentrology, tropical infection, hematology, neurology, cardiac ICU and outpatient clinics. We got the chance to follow student clinical discussions and did a presentation for the students and our supervisor on a tropical infection patients we examined together with the recidents help.

I was truly amazed by the way the doctors we run into were practising medicine with less or no use of advanced medical technology or imaging. It gave me an idea of the similarities and differences in how we in Norway practise and treat patients. The bed-side teaching with students and doctors from the Indonesian medical system and the daily practised medicine at the hospitals was undoubtly a valuable experience for me as a future doctor. I got to know theire perspective on treatment of patients, community aquired conditions, how different nurses and physicians cooperated, medical decision making and the challenges with a less advanced primary healthcare system. I really enjoyed the way everything was organized for us and the time spent on acquiring more theoretical knowledge and practical skills.

Social and cultural experience

Unforgetable moments! The local comitee in Padang where, CIMSA were fantastic organizing different trips and out goings for us in Padang but also the more touristic places aroung the west coast of West Sumatra like Bukittinggi, Batusangkar and Sikuai Island. Our host family doctor was scheduled a 1 day call on Mentawai Island, an malaria endemic area of Indonesia. We’d great fun, taking a ferry over, and spent the day at the only and new bulid hospital on the island of 40.000 inhabitans on outpatient services for the population of the island. Onther great way of seeing the diverse medical conditions and diagnostic workup for minor and compliated internal medicine cases. Adam and I were selected to paly on the resident’s soccer team, we played a match - I score a goal and we spent a couple of amazing days together. In addition we made great friendship with the residents Fadil and Yanni with whom we spent a lot of time together both at the hospital and also on social activities with their friends and families.

As a student of medicine you get your basic knowledge on the healthcare system you work in. In order to enrich your perception as a healthcare provider in an era of globalization you’ll have to get out and experience other healthcare realities. Indonesia is a fantastic diverese, colourful country with an exciting culture and together with the great hospitality and friendship we met in Padang, I would warmly recommend it as a exchange site both academically and socially!