Kroatia

I was in the Traumatology Clinic of Zagreb, "Draškovićeva". Draškovićeva is actually the name of the street, but everyone calls the hospital "Draškovićeva". The hospital is very close to the city center. Since my field was Emergency medicine I mostly spend my time  in the emergency room and  in the cast room.  I also visited the burn department, the operation ward and the intensive care. The clinic is situated in a very old building. But the intenisve care and the burn department

I was at the hospital KB Dubrava in Zagreb in the Cardiac Care Unit (CCU), the department of Cardiology. Every day routine was to see patients in the morning in the CCU and after that watch angiographies and PCIs for the rest of the day. The hospital was the newest in Zagreb so Croatians were quite proud of it. It is a big and weird-looking hospital and at least in the CCU the equipments were quite similar to those in Finland. The biggest difference was the absence of hand desinfection liquids and the lower hygiene in general. Also

I spent one month of my summer at the traumatology clinic in Zagreb, Croatia in June 2006. Big part of my daily programme was watching some operations in the operating-room, mainly knee operations. I'm interested in orthopaedics so the subject was great for me and I was really enthusiastic in the beginning. But already the second day of my exchange at the hospital the truth started to unveil for me, they really didn't care for me at all and actually thought that I was in their way all the time. They told me that I can do whatever I feel

I participated in Professional Exchange in Paediatric ward of Osijek University Hospital. I was slightly surprised that the clinical work in Croatia was not so far from the work in Finland.  For example, devices and equipments were quite similar as in Finland. To mention some small differences: the doctors do not usually dictate on tape but they dictate directly to the secretary or type themselves with old-fashioned typing machines; there are always lots of people in the same room and the sound was often quite loud;

I spent August 2005 in Split, Croatia. I had a great vacation. Croatia is an amazing country and even though I traveled a lot around Croatia, there are still many wonderful places I did not get to see. If you want to concentrate on doing research during your exchange, maybe Croatia is not the best place for you to go.