A fourth-year student of General Medicine Irene Santo spent her summer internship at the hospital in Rijeka, Croatia. She sends us an essay and pictures.
When I first listed the places I wished to apply for this IFMSA internship, I had chosen some like Thailand, Taiwan and thirteen others. All of them shared at least two features: their great distance from Prague and their considerable differences in the field of medicine.
However, after discussing it with my parents, the idea didn’t seem as appealing to them, and we ended up agreeing that this time I would stay somewhere in Europe.
At first I was disappointed, but after accepting the idea I ended up choosing Croatia as my first option, as it was one of the few countries in Europe I had never visited.
Over the entire month of August I stayed in Rijeka, a fairly small and not very well known city, but that received more international students alone than the rest of Croatia.
We were about forty students from all over the world including places like Lebanon, Canada, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, and, of course, almost every country in Europe.
My internship was at the Department of Plastic Surgery. However, it was explained to me that during the summer there are substantially fewer surgeries in this field, so I was given the opportunity to combine it with general surgery.
We would go to the hospital in the morning and have the afternoons to ourselves. The doctors were also willing to ‘close an eye’ if we had to leave earlier or skip a day in order to attend the social programme.
The social programme was absolutely astonishing! Really one of the best according to what I have heard from other students’ experiences.
I was picked up by my contact person from the bus I took between Zagreb and Rijeka, he carried my bags and accompanied me to the dorm where he helped check in and get settled.
We would have activities and events almost every day and even on the free days, someone from the association would always come to ‘check up on us’. Even for ‘not in the schedule’ trips that we wanted to do on our own they would always be willing to give us a hand to book the trips and hostels.
During the thirty days of August we managed to visit almost every well-known beautiful place in Croatia as well as its many hidden treasures. Just off the top of my head I can think of Zagreb, Rijeka, Zrče beach in Pag Island (the ‘Croatian Ibiza’), Opatjia, Rovinj, Trsat, Plitvice lakes, Krk Island, Brijuni and Krka Nationals Parks, Zadar, Split, Hvar and Dubrovník, recently made so illustrious by the popular series ‘Game of Thrones’.
And as if Croatia was not enough we also manage to save a few days to visit Ljubljana and the ‘out of this world’ Bled Lakes, in Slovenia as well as Trieste and Venice in Italy.
Now, looking back, I am delighted I chose Croatia. It gave me the opportunity to merge my internship with meeting so many different and interesting people from all over the world, the rest that I needed and the chance to visit so many places. I came back with the proof that I do not need to go that far to have one of the best Augusts I can remember. What more could I possibly ask for?
