I am located with my practical training in Tomas Bata Regional Hospital in Zlín. I would say the hospital environment is basically the same compared to Finnish hospitals even though there is a lot of differences. Itself the hospital is large complex of different buildings which all has own departments. So the hospital isn´t just one big building with different sectors and that is what makes the working there little tricky. Whenever you need to go to another department you might need to travel all along to the different side of the hospital area for few minutes easily. Our locker rooms are located in different building and after changing to uniform you have to head outside and find your way to the department. You usually find yourself walking outside depending what weather it is, which doesn´t make it very pleasant. Also, for moving the patients between different departments it´s not very handy system.
We have changed the departments almost every week to another. Basically they are not as modern as in Finland. I wouldn´t say that is a surprise. Mostly no one speaks english except the students that we are with. It makes the communication with nurses and patients and other staff little bit difficult. Comparing to practice we had in Finland to practice here, it doesn´t offer that much what we expected. It seems that the students here doesn´t have own mentor and maybe that´s the reason we don´t get to do so much things in the hospital. The days in the hospital can really be boring when there is nothing to do or see. Best things might be those when we had opportunity to see different surgeries.
Even though the Zlín isn´t that big city it has decent amount things to do and easy ways to travel somewhere else to enjoy your time. There is a zoo just nearby where we visited in the first week. The city has also own ice hockey team called PSG Berani Zlín whose matches we have gone to see with other students. Time to time there is country presentation with two different countries against each other where we get to hear history and other information about them and lastly taste the food they have prepared for us. Zlín also has a mall with movie theatre where you can enjoy the new movies. Likewise in Finland there is a lot of parties every week with different themes that contains parties with other students abroad. So the most common way to spend your time is to grab a drink or two of good Czech beer and just hang out with other Erasmus students.
Another option is to travel somewhere in Czech or nearby countries. Zlín is located actually very central place when thinking to travel countries like Hungary, Austria or Slovakia. So when there is time enough in your schedule you can find yourself in places like Budapest or Wien which are really nice. In Bratislava there wasn´t that much to experience though.
Comments