We, four girls from University of Bergen, were lucky to have the opportunity to spend nine days in St. Petersburg in March, 2018 during the internship at your Neurology Department. We would like to thank you all for your warm welcome. We are very grateful and overwhelmed by your kindness and hospitality. It was truly an experience for a lifetime.

It was an exited group who arrived in St. Petersburg March 22nd. We were picked up by two of the medical students from the University, who brought us safely from the airport to our hotel. The students took us out for dinner and kindly told us a little bit about what we needed to know about the city – as well as they fixed Russian sim-cards for us, so our stay would be as safe and comfortable as possible.

We had a wonderful group of medical students who took very well care of us during our entire stay. A big thank you to all of them(!). They were amazing tour guides with an incredible patience (especially when our plans took longer time than we expected), as well as they became good friends. The students seemed to care sincerely about us, and always looked after us, making sure we felt safe and secure. We felt very safe under our entire stay, and we were never short of anything.

Educational content

During our five days with education at the Neurological Dept., we got to see patients with different types of neurological diagnosis - including some diagnoses we hadn't seen before. We were lucky to have Professor Inga to show us neurological examination of the patients, as well as answering our questions. As Inga examined the patient, one of the doctors translated it to English for us, which made sure that there was no problem with different languages. After every patient we had a review/small lecture, which included pathophysiology of the disease, treatment, etc. We also got to spend some time at the Simulation Centre, which we were very impressed by, and we had a lot fun there.

We are so impressed with the clinical skills of both doctors and students. We leave this city more inspired and motivated for further studying to the profession we have chosen.

Culture

Our new friends among the medical students and doctors, took us to some of the beautiful attractions in the city and accompanied us most of the time. In our free time, they kindly gave us tips about what was worth to see and how to get there.

We were lucky to see amazing buildings and performances – such as the Hermitage, St. Isaacs Cathedral, operas and ballet. The ballet ended up to be our favourite event during our stay! It was magical.

We would love to give a big thank you for showing us your wonderful city and culture. We truly appreciate it. We would also like to say thank you for the close contact we had during our planning

of the trip – and for the effort you all put in to make our planning and trip best possible. We all hope to visit S. Petersburg again soon.

 

Sincerely,
Åse, Kristin, Sigrid & Irene
University of Bergen, Norway.