Greetings from Plzen
Hey! I am on exchange in Plzen, Czech Republic for three months. I came here with my two good friends about a month ago and this has already been a great experience. We are all studying nursing and doing some internships at the university hospitals. The department changes every week and so far I have worked in the cardiac intensive care unit, the operating room and the pediatric oncology department for example.
Czech healthcare has surprised me and I have noticed a big difference in many different things compared to Finland. Here, asepsis is weaker and for example in the operating room, I noticed that sterility was contaminated on several occasions. In the children’s infectious disease ward, the treatment equipments were not cleaned after using and for example a scale was transported from room to room without disinfection. In the same department, a spinal cord sample was taken from a child in an office that also served as an employee break room, medicine room, and doctor’s office.
In the Czech Republic, all the patient information is on paper and entries are made by hand. Medicines are not double-checked and they are not even controlled in any way. Students are treated demeaningly in many places and usually they are forced to eat in the locker room separately from others.
In my free time I have explored Plzen, gone to the gym, had dinners and hung out with my friends. We have met other exchange students as well and also gotten to know a couple of local people. Plzen is a beer city, so of course we have become thoroughly familiar with the local beer. One weekend we traveled to Munich, Germany, and we are currently planning another trip to Austria.
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