It’s the end of my exchange period in Denmark, so, it’s high time to sum up what happened during these two months!
Well, I had my practical training in the town of Holbæk, which is an hour from Copenhagen by train and is just a peaceful and idyllic place. The training was a part of Biomedical Laboratory Science Degree Programme and was more profound and specialized, than a general training we had during our 3rd year of study. The clinical laboratory of the Holbæk Hospital includes several basic specialty areas, such as biochemistry, haematology as well as liquid chromatography (UPLC) and mass spectrometry (MS) systems, ect. My target specialty area was mainly clinical chemistry, but overall, I’ve been through all the areas of the lab. Also, taking blood samples was a part of every workday as a morning round, for instance.
The staff, by the way, was sooo friendly and helpful, I really enjoyed the atmosphere there. The laboratory has the agreements, according to which they constantly accept students for training and studying. It is also student-friendly for the exchange internship, as most of the staff and patients can easily communicate in English. They also have some nice traditions, such as serving fresh-baked bread on Mondays and Fridays, as well as bringing some pastry for everybody even for no particular reason 🙂
Equivalent to a Finnish Degree Programme in Biomedical Laboratory Science, the study program of “bioanalytiker” (dan.) in Denmark focuses more on practical skills as well as on studying theory along with practice, in comparison to Finland (my opinion!). There’s also a supervising teacher in the laboratory, who is responsible for the students’ issues and some extra education of the staff. I find it very important, that there’s a teacher right in the lab, because it definitely helps students a lot during their practical training. My supervising teacher was Lis – wonderful person! She was very helpful during the training and she also suggested a topic for the research, which I performed as a required assignment. As a result, I’ve written an article for the professional journal on this topic (the issue will be published in December).
Ok, here starts the most interesting part – I’d like to tell you about my impressions of Denmark!
The very first weekend I spent in Roskilde (30 min by train), namely in Viking Ship Museum with other exchange students from all over the central region of Denmark. In short – we were rowing just like true vikings!
Some other weekend I was visiting Copenhagen with one of my colleagues. The capital is just great and the brightest impression was the Tivoli Gardens. This is the second-oldest amusement park in the world, opened in 1843 (the oldest one is also in Denmark).
These days it was decorated in a Halloween-style and that was just amazing and really impressive.
All in all, I’m glad that I had such oppirtunity to travel and gain new experiences. It was a valuable practical and living international experience, which is quite useful to have in our globalizing world.
– Alina I.
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