Exchange Report

Accommodation was arranged after I received my registration through the International Visits Coordinator and the KI Housing Coordinator. The apartment reserved to me was at Jägargatan 20. At my first meeting with the International Visits Coordinator, I was well briefed about the program, and I was also provided with the required stipend and SL access card for travel with the public transportation system during my exchange stay.   The apartment was clean and furnished for all my needs. However, the TV set in the room was not functioning at all, and there was no remote control provided for it. In addition, probably due to construction works at the time, the wireless internet was not fully functional at times.

The teaching and most of the other activities that I was involved with were conducted in English. In cases where the medium was in Swedish (when we were talking with patients and care takers), most of the patients, parents as well as care takers were willing to talk in English.  <o:p></o:p>   <span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:#232323;mso-ansi-language:EN-US; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">I have not experienced any difficulty in meeting with the Swedish culture, as I have experience living abroad for some years. My major impression during my visit pertain to the impact of differences in resources and technology on the modalities of teaching and service delivery (when I compare how we teach and deliver services in Ethiopia with that of what I witnessed at KI) and the dominance of females in all spheres of society in Sweden (including church services).

I had lunch and dinner meetings with some faculty members at KI. In addition, I was able to make few visits to - a rural part of Sweden in the South and to the border between Sweden and Finland (trip on a cruise ship) and thereby witness the country's landscape as well as what farming looks like in the country. <o:p></o:p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">During my weekend in the rural part of Southern Sweden, I had an opportunity to attend an opera event (Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi) broadcast through video-web facility from Stockholm.<o:p></o:p> I have also attended a mass in a local church in the countryside, as well as the St. Lucia's celebration at KI's main campus.<o:p></o:p>

I think the teacher exchange program is highly valuable, and means should be explored for its continuation with involvement of more teachers from both sides.<p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;">

<p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;">Among the most important other activities I carried out during my stay include meeting faculty and academic coordinators for initiating and forging collaboration between KI and my institution (AAU). For instance, I have made contacts for initiating a collaboration between the KI and Addis Ababa University in the area of pediatrics residency and fellowship programs. I have also made important contacts for revitalizing the student exchange program in the area of pediatrics and community health between KI and AAU.<o:p></o:p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;">  <p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;">As I am at the moment involved in an operational research to scale up Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) for low birth weight neonates in Ethiopia, I have made a visit to KI’s Neonatology Unit and have taken lessons on what is being done in terms of neonatal care (including Kangaroo care) within the Swedish context.  <o:p></o:p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;">  <p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;">Some of the students I met at the Global Health Case Seminar also have shown interest in getting me involved in a structured global health program that they are planning to develop next year.<o:p></o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"> I had also an opportunity to meet the Dean of Education at KI to discuss various opportunities for academic collaboration between AAU and KI as well as on issues related to global health and primary health care. That discussion has also shed light on the possibilities of developing new collaborations and strengthening already existing ones.  <p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;">  <p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;">Overall, my impression is that there is conductive institutional environment and the required linkage for revitalizing and strengthening the future collaboration between KI and AAU in the areas of global health as well as clinical medicine.<o:p></o:p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; vertical-align: baseline;">I knew about the program through the long-term collaboration we had with Karolinska Institute. As a medical student myself, I remember my senior students coming to KI and medical students from KI coming to the Faculty of Medicine (now College of Health Sciences), Addis Ababa University through the student exchange. <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; vertical-align: baseline;"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; vertical-align: baseline;">I had also the opportunity to get involved in supervising KI students coming to AAU rural attachment when I was Chair of Community Health (2001-2004).  <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; vertical-align: baseline;"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; vertical-align: baseline;">I was also member of the AAU team (as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies for College of Health Sciences) when a new memorandum understanding was signed for collaboration between KI and AAU in 2009.<o:p></o:p>

The fact that the lecture and seminars are less structured allowing students make their own informed decisions seems to have made an impression on me as a teacher, and this may help me modify my approach to teaching-learning in my own institution. <o:p></o:p>   Of course, the number of weeks that medical students are attached to a given discipline (such as pediatrics) at KI seems a bit less (five weeks?) compared to the case in Ethiopia (six months spread across two years). Even though they spend more hours per case, the number of cases for which KI students get exposed to as medical students is also less compared to that of the medical students in Ethiopia. KI students’ knowledge of issues related to global health and primary health care also seem less than it should be for their level. <o:p></o:p>

I was involved in both clinical teaching (case discussion and bedside teaching) as well as classroom teaching (in the form of Global Health Case Seminar). In the clinical teaching for medical students in the pediatrics round, I was able to share the Ethiopian perspective on how patients are diagnosed and treated - with the various cases that were being dealt by the students during my visit to their rounds. In the Case Seminar in Global Health, I was able to contribute in the areas of: <o:p></o:p> ·         Planning different activities within a rural health center<o:p></o:p> ·         Data requirements and sources of data for planning<o:p></o:p> ·         Statistical techniques for generating vital indicators and service targets<o:p></o:p> ·         Concepts and steps in community diagnosis and development of health action plan for catchment populations<o:p></o:p> ·         Responding to questions from the students regarding available resources and methods for situation analysis and identification of major health problems that need to be addressed within a rural health center and catchment communities <o:p></o:p>   In terms of clinical teaching, even though the format is similar to the one I used to in Ethiopia, there are differences in certain aspects that include:<o:p></o:p>1. Time given for each case is very long compared to the situation here in Ethiopia;2. As a result of difference in technology, there are myriads of investigations per each case (some of the tests are even new to me);3. Again, due to differences in resources, parents and caretakers in pediatrics and neonatal wards are entitled to their own beds - In Ethiopia, most of them usually resort to sleeping on blankest and bed sheets lined on floors; and4. The seminar classes are less structured and more participatory than the situation in Ethiopia.

During the typical week that I was engaged in academic and teaching related activities, time spent on the various activities can be estimated as follows:             - Total hours spent in teaching and other academic related activities per week – About 24 hours <o:p></o:p> -          Amount of time spent on class room and seminar and related teaching – 8 hours  <o:p></o:p> -          Amount of time spent on bedside/teaching – 10 hours<o:p></o:p> -          Amount of time spent attending academic lectures and PhD defense sessions – 6 hours.  <o:p></o:p>

Accommendation

Language and Culture

Leisure time

Miscellaneous

Other activities

Preparation

Reflections

Teaching

Teaching hours