The last couple of days has been met with mixed feelings regarding the hospital life.

When I had finished with my surgery rotation in The Netherlands, I knew for sure that I would want surgery for Iceland as well. I tried to switch, but unfortunately was unable to anymore as everything was fully booked. Sigrún, our coordinator here in Iceland, said that if I had been earlier, it still would have been possible. Talk about pouring salt on the wound. Alas, nothing to do about it and I would just have to make the best of Internal Medicine here in Iceland.

Internal Medicine is all about communication and for someone who doesn’t speak Icelandic, it is terribly hard for me to work efficiently in the hospital. Even after you’ve introduced yourself as a foreign student many people tend to speak Icelandic. Don’t get me wrong, Icelandic people (not just those in the hospital) are very nice. Many of them have been very helpful to me. It’s just that in the hospital I have to ask for a translation many times and it gets really tiresome.

My usual day starts in the morning with the report, a summary of patients that were admitted the past 24 hours. Some students have said that there is some education at times as well, but I’ve not had any so far and thus every report has practically been useless for me. The discussion of patients after that is alright as the doctors there try to involve me as much as possible, but the rounds are mostly a waste of time again. Most people in General Internal Medicine are crippled, old people who don’t speak English very well so I can’t go and speak with them for myself either. I hope you understand that this part of the morning is not always something I look forward to.

I plan everything ahead when it comes to school (not nearly as much in my private life though) and you can’t imagine how lost I felt in the afternoons. I didn’t have much of a roster. Staying at the ward in the afternoon is not a very good idea as it mostly consists of administration and filling in forms. There is an occasional venapuncture, but I’m not going to wait all day for just that. So what the hell am I supposed to do then? Other Icelandic interns have lectures (see the post after the previous for that…), practicals and other things in the afternoon, all in Icelandic. Okay, maybe not all of them as one of the practicals of the surgical (!) interns was given in English because I was present (which was actually pretty good). I’ll be trying a hematology practical next week. Luckily, I finally managed to go to the OR and just asked if I could join a surgery. Even though I wasn’t able to scrub in (I was so close being able to, but then the surgery intern came in at the last moment), it felt great to be in the OR again.

That last part and the conversations with my supervisor, Jón,  and intern coordinator Gunny has given me some hope again. Jón is a gastroenterologist and actually studied in Eindhoven and Nijmegen so he speaks Dutch, a very nice surprise. He was very kind and gave me lots of things I will be doing during my stay in the hospital. Gunny is also called the ‘grandmother of all interns’ and I can see why: she takes such good care of us. She gaves us a tour through the hospital, a locker, some practical papers, a list of Icelandic words commonly used in the hospital and their translations…and so on. Plus, we finally got our ID cards. I thought that Dutch people had trouble pronouncing my name, but try Icelandic people! I’m glad I can finally just show them my ID card after introducing myself because my introductions will automatically follow with either “what?” or a horrible pronunciation of my name.

Here are our cards. A læknanemi is a medical student, a Kandidat is a 7th year medical student (more like an ‘arts assistent’ in Dutch), a læknir is a doctor and a sérfræðingur is a specialized doctor.

It may sound I’m not having a very good time at the hospital, but that’s not true. I just whine a lot. I guess you all know. Tomorrow is something to look forward to: The Golden Circle! Finally some real photos of what Iceland’s got to offer! I’ll see you!