I got informed about a pick-up service from airport but, bacause I was already familiar with Stockholm and travelled by ferry and not by aeroplane, I decided to pick up the keys and go to my housing by myself. KI offered me a good map in which were instructions for transport from KI to my housing and also about the closest grocery stores, pharmacy and other things one might need.

I applied for a room from KI Housing the same day I got my acceptance letter and I got offered a room from my first choice Pax in Solna. The rooms have a private toilet and shared corridor kitchen. Pax has a good location because it’s next to Västra skogen metro and bus stop from where one can quickly get to KI, Karolinska University Hospital and the city centrum (15 min to KI, 20 min to hospital, 10 min to the centrum). A big shopping mall, Solna centrum, is just one metro stop from Västra skogen.

KI, the association of medical stundents, Medicinska Föreningen (MF) and another student organizations, Global Buddies, arranged a lot of events from city tours and sports events to evening get togethers. Also Erasmus student network (ESN) arranged plenty of activities, such as cultural evenings to train your language skills and day trips to close-by cities.

I found out that my university has an exchange program with Karolinska Institutet (KI) when I was in my fourth year in medical school. I heard about this opportunity from a friend who had liked KI very much. I found out that KI is one of the best medical universities in the world with it’s high class research projects and advanced clinical teaching. Because of these reasons and also because I wanted to improve my swedish skills I decided to apply to KI. First I needed to write a motivation letter and submit my study records to my home university. Then I got a permission to apply directly to KI and got accepted for the autumn semester 2016.

All in all, I had a great four months in Stockholm and whole heartedly recommed both KI and the city itself as an exchange destination. I enjoyed about learning how the swedish health care system work and comparing it to the very similar finnish system. I also loved getting to know to the swedish culture and people as well as to the multicultural Stockholm. 

I have studied swedish for nine years but it had gotten really rusty because I hadn’t used it for seven years so I was happy that after couple of months in Sweden I spoke it fluently again and learned a lot of new, medical vocabulary. 

I chose Clinical rotations in medicine because I was in my last year of studies so there were no new medical courses available for me and also because I wanted to practise my swedish skills as much as possible and see how the swedish hospital system works. The staff was really friendly towards students and everybody encouraged me to participate, ask questions and to study more by myself so ended up learning even more than I expected. I got to assist in surgeries, examine patients with my supervisor and sometimes to first examine the patient and the present the patient to my supervisor. I also wrote some essayes, did an exercise about the basics of scientific research, which I found really useful, and also filmed a video of a patient interview as part of communication exercise. I found all of these assignements really educational.