Report of practice in Thomas Jefferson University in 2013

The experience at Thomas Jefferson University (TJU) was exciting. I was encouraged to be more passionate towards medicine and found several important things for my dream in the future. I’m very thankful to everyone who gave me this chance and who was kind to me at TJU. My dream is to practice medicine in a place where there are not enough doctors in the world. So I wanted to see medicine abroad and how it is operated. We did mainly three things which are following doctors in several departments, taking classes about cardiology and training medical skills at the skills simulation center. I would like to share what I learned there.

First, I felt that the system of teaching and learning was different between Japan and America. It was JeffHOPE that I felt this difference. It is an activity that the students at TJU practice medicine for homeless for free. In Philadelphia, there are some shelters for homeless. I went to a shelter for mothers and kids. The thing I was surprised at was that the first year students interviewed patients and the fourth year students taught the juniors how to interview. Their attitude of teaching was confident and responsible and they seemed to take it for granted to teach juniors. I’m not sure that Japanese students would be able to teach like that. I thought that American students had more passion for studying medicine. In daily medicine in the hospital, I saw that residents taught students in the same way, as the doctors to residents. The doctors in Japan also teaches residents and students but generally they seems to have less time than in America. I really reflected my attitude to studying and wanted to have more passion.

Second, we had training time at the skills simulation center. There were many kinds of great tools and machines for training clinical skills. I found that they were not so much superior to in Japan. In terms of clinical treatments, I felt that there were also not many differences between Japan and America. However, the outstanding difference was the PATIENTS. In America, there are many races, like whites and blacks. It seemed that it was no matter if anyone came to the hospital of TJU. Compared to that, almost all patients in Japan are Japanese, or speaks in Japanese. I have seen a Chinese patient in Japan once and the doctors couldn’t communicate with the patient well at that time. I thought that if I want to see various races, it’s not enough to practice medicine only in Japan.

Finally, the doctors and comedical workers were very kind to us. I really appreciate them, especially Mrs.Radi who took care of us. I am very sure that this experience in America would encourage me to have more motivation towards studying medicine. I never forget this experience and I would like to contribute medicine of Japan and all over the world.