May 29: Krems

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Today was the day to trip to the city of Krems to see the Medical School there. We woke up early and rode to a metro stop in north of Vienna proper. Then we boarded an intercity train to go all the way to Krems. The train ride was beautiful, the Austrian countryside is always a beautiful sight to behold. 

The train ride was direct to our town so it was a pretty easy ride, about an our or two. We were able to all sit together on the top floor of our carriage. We all spent the morning talking and working on our blogs as the countryside sped past us. When our train arrived in Krems we were meet by our contact at the town’s private medical school. She walked us the 20 minutes or so to the medical school on the other side of town. 

Krems is a really quaint town.  Not as cute as Salzburg or Dorfgastein but it’s cute nonetheless. I would call it a large smaller sized city. With a train to Vienna close by and reasonably close, it wouldn’t be a bad place to live. The actual school was really pretty, it was very modernist in design and was beautiful inside and out. When we walked it we were directed to a lecture hall where we got to play a warm up game with the other students that attended the medical school there. They were all very nice and I was really surprised by their almost universally good English. After the warm up we had some lectures about the healthcare system in Austria, and what stood out to me was the stark difference between nurses and doctors. Nurses in Austria almost don’t do anything that they can in the United States. They are much lower in status here than they are in the United States. I really don’t like that, because doctors already have a lot of tasks to do, they need to be able to count on nurses and work as a team. 

After the first round of lectures, we went upstairs for lunch with some of the medical students. The students here are very kind, and they all seem to have very interesting back stories. One girl was from Iran, but most of her family was in the USA. Our lunch was good and the conversations were better. The students answered a lot of our questions about going to medical School in Europe. If we get a degree in any EU member state, it is valid in all other EU member states. I could really see myself going to medial school here, even if it is expensively priced because it private. I like the town and i like the students who go there. 

After lunch, we went back to the lecture hall to hear a lecture from the one and only Lisa ray. She told us about the credentialing system in the USA, and honestly I had no idea how Byzantine it is. Serval different agencies and groups trying to let the public know if people know what they are actually doing. 

After all the lectures, we went out on the town with a student from the university. We walked down to the local Aldi’s and got beer and wine to drink by the Danube river. We had a great time just chilling by the water and talking about our trip. Now that we are all closer with each other these kinds of conversations are much better. After the beef was all gone, we walked to a local Gelato place and got some ice cream before heading back to the university for some pizza and Dr. House. 

When we got back to the university we watched an episode with Dr. House with a doctor lecturer who would pause the show and explain diagnoses and inaccuracies. The funniest inaccuracies is when Dr. House pointed at an MRI scan and said a tumor was present, the doctor paused the show and said there was no tumor and the brain was completely healthy. After the show was over I was not prepared for what was about to happen. To show applause in a lecture hall, apparently Europeans beat on the desks. I was so shook when 50 students started pounding on be desks creating a roar that sounded like war chants. 

But the entire experience to Krems was great. Between meeting people and learning how medicine works in Europe,  I feel like we had a very productive day and now I have a new medical school in mind. 

After the show was over, we meet up with Dr. Demers and Lisa and went back to the train station by ourselves. We managed to catch our train on time, which was pretty late. I sat by myself and just contemplated life on the train ride home. When we got back to Vienna, it was very late so we just went straight home to rest up for the next day. 


Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 13, 2018 at 8:48 AM

    Byzantine is an excellent descriptor.

    ReplyDelete

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