My entire
academic program was made up by clinical placements, so I can`t say much about
the quality of KI lectures. However the library facilities on campus and in the
hospital were excellent.
On placement staff gave me a lot of freedom and trust and thus
allowed me to practice a lot more freely than it would have been the case in
Ireland. I was treated more so as an equal, than as a subordinate and my
input was always considered and discussed. The somewhat over-regulated Irish
nursing system requires, at least in theory, that a staff nurse always (!)
supervises a student, when he or she performs any practical skill. This leads
to Irish staff often being reluctant to let students act on their own. In
Sweden the staff usually supervised me for the first few days, until they had a
grasp of my skill level and would then let me work on my own, where
appropriate, and assigned me my "own" patients. In Ireland students
are sometimes also used as cheap labour, but this was never the case in Sweden.
Sentences like “I change the patient, you do something more interesting” were
quiet frequent. Staff also asked for my personal aims and then invested time to
enable me to achieve them. Overall Södersjukhuset had an absolutely outstanding
learning environment.