At my home university there are 5 clinical rotations: intensive & respiratory care,
primary health, traumatologic & orthopaedic rehabilitation,
neurorehabilitation and one elective rotation. For neurorehabilitation I had chosen exchange
at KI. In the end of last year many
classmates had the chance to go for exchange internships to Barcelona, and
applied during the end of April. As them, I was very interested in learning to use different evidence-based approaches
and definetly wanted to try something really different from Chilean health
context. So, although it was economically hard to access to KI (there are
no more scholarships for applying to Sweden) I felt I had to take this amazing
chance for exchange.
As a good Chilean, I did not realise I was out of deadline date
to apply for a clinical rotation at KI during October 2012 with the rest of my
classmates, but afortunately KI International Coordinator informed me that
there were vacancies for a clinical rotation during January – March 2013, so on
June 5th of 2012 I was glad to submit my application form and send
all my papers. Lucky me, on September 2012 I finally got my acceptance letter.
On that day I immediately applied for accomodation at SSSB, accepting my offer
of accomodation on November 2012. That same week my parents bought my air
tickets and I paid for my insurance. Started to feel already so excited, so I had few preventive medical check-ups
(specially for MRSA screening) and lucky me I did not need to be vaccinated.
Int he same line, exchange information by my home university was not exactly opportune, there is few posters around the corner, but a PT teacher who
went for
exchange to KI many years ago did the conctact with KI International
Coordinator timely enough for passing me the responsability of getting
more
study abroad information, wich was taken from KI website (very
complete!), mails by KI International Coordinator, online forums, a
Swedish friend who came to my country for exchange and the Welcome
package. I consider myself quite organized so KI help was very
convenient. Later on, I started to get in contact with my clinical supervisors, and I was very glad to read a letter in Spanish! I started to relax a little bit, because I saw pictures of the hospital where I was going to be everyday and asked my supervisor many questions related to the clinical rotation and studies, so I had an answer for everything I needed.