IFMSA student exchange - my experience

I was requested to make this blog since I already have one student exchange done under this programme. Do take into consideration that this is only my experience and how I did the things. I'm sure there are a lot of other med students out there who have similar or very different experiences about this.

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Lets begin! :smile:

Ok, so for those who haven't heard of it, this is a programme for international exchange of medical students. They have two types of student exchange:

1) unilateral - student comes to the country and pays all the expenses, unilateral fee is 350€ which covers the accomodation, but not social programme and food

2) bilateral - "student for student" where each country beares the cost for student that comes to student exchange, expenses include accomodation, food and social programme

My university only offers bilateral exchange, however we as students when we chose a country have to pay around 160€ for them to arrange the accomodation and around 26€ from that amount is kept safe as deposit that, if you complete the exchange according to all the conditions of the exchange, your university gives back to you when you come home.

I had chosen for my student exchange and the option for it was a professional exchange. My professional exchange lasted the entire September of this year.

One of the first steps I had to take was to apply to be a ( person) for foreign students who would come to my country. It is one of the conditions that my university set and without completing it I couldn't get back the deposit (but I stil can go to the exchange nevertheless). I had to basically do some of the things when students arrive, like welcome them when they get to the train station, take them to the student dorms etc. Nothing too difficult. Now, I'm not sure that each country has those conditions since my in didn't have to do that; she only provided an accomodation for me.

So, when you pretty much have all that done, you need to visit the IFMSA website and with name and your university gave you and go to something called Explore Pages. It is basically a summary of what you are expected to do before you send your application. The biggest stress of this part is that you have a bunch of documents you need to gather and to the website - without it you obviously can't send the application for the country you had chosen. It took me around a month to gather everything and the most troublesome part was arranging the liability insurance. When finally everything was sent (in February), all that was left was to wait.

Now, the local exchange officers told us approximately how long each of us would wait for the response, but that wasn't true since we waited more than what was said. I waited till the end of July and quite frankly, I thought I was gonna have to give up since they didn't respond for so long.

So, in matter of few days I had to arrange my plane and train ticket and it was quite expensive. The thing is, if I bought the tickets earlier, like 2-3 months before the trip, it would have been cheaper. But, since I wasn't sure if was gonna accept me as their exchange student or not, that was the risk I wasn't willing to take. Looking back, I don't regret the extra money as much as I regret the nerves I lost during this "waiting game".

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When I arrived at , I was welcomed by my and her roommate; both of them were my roomates for my entire stay there. They were fun and thank God, knew English so we had no problems communicating. (Disclaimer: I don't know French and trust me, I did try to learn, but I didn't have much free time cuz university was sucking the life out of me :anguished: ). They had shown me around the city so I can manage and go everywhere on my own. Also, the most important part was the hospital.

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I was assigned to Pulmology department and when I first arrived there, everyone was kind to me. They didn't really see me not knowing French as a flaw, but rather, tried their best to communicate with me in English. Doctors weren't very interested though, but interns and some students tried to incorporate me into the department as one of their own. (Disclaimer: the city I was in obliges students to work in hospital and they call it something like 'stage' which is kinda like residency except you aren't a doctor and you mostly do paperwork and examine the patients, under a supervision of a doctor or intern sometimes). The system they have is rather an advenced one in my opinion and that kind of system would be great to have in my country too, but I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon.

The things I mostly did there was auscultation, examinating patients and even drew arterial blood once. I also saw bronchoscopy, pleural punction and spirometry. The difference I noticed was that they always use auscultation, percussion and ultrasound to detect the exact place of pleural effusion, but in my country they don't use ultrasound at all which I find kind of odd :sweat_smile: I even asked one doctor of ours when I came back why they don't use ultrasound and he simply said that it's not needed.

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As for my other part of exchange, my free time, I hanged out with other exchange students a lot - we had luch together, went sightseeing, went to a city weekend festival, shopping, traveled to Normandy and Bretagne to see more of etc. With my roommates and their friends I even went to a music festival for the weekend (it was hella fun, but so cold omg :joy: ). I decided to share some photos that I took (I love taking photos please bare with me :innocent: ):

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And that's about it. I had a lot of fun and got lots of new experiences. It was my first travel completely on my own and I'm actually proud of myself that I went through this and handled everything as best as I could. I would lie if I said I wasn't scared or at least nervous for what was coming for me, but honestly I feel more mature now (if it makes any sense lol). I highly recommend that you try student exchange, even if it's not through this programme. It's, I would say, a truly fulfilling and rewarding experience. An adventure, a poet would say. ~

Background: https://2016.export.gov//build/groups/public/@eg_fr/documents/webcontent/~export/eg_fr_033269~47~DCT_Center_Content/319856-1.jpg