I thought that Global Friends was a very good idea! Through them I learned lots of people. Also the exchange meetings with people in the same field were nice. I got Swedish friends through my spare time activity - a sport called capoeira. Also I felt that there was a lot going on in Stockholm, always something to do.
I've heard that it's a good experience to go abroad. I did it mostly because I wanted to see how Physiotherapy works in other countries. I choose Sweden because I knew the language and therefore I knew I would get the most out of it. I choose KI because I had heard that it was a really good university and I was able to study Physiotherapy there. I had heard from another student that the information was really slow in her exchange progress when she went to KI so I didn't worry very much, I just waited. I left in January and got the confirmation the first or second week of December. Then the accomodation was really fast. It took me one week on its hight to get a place to stay for the whole exchange! The information i got from both KI and my home university was sufficient and the information exchange went fast. KI website is so big that I would say that it was the only place where I had problems, especially because I attended Swedish courses and wanted to have information about them. As I'm from Finland I didn't have to get any vaccinations and certificates, only take the MRSA test in KI.
1SY018 : Physiotherapy 7 - Clinical physiotherapy
The course had a good construction. It was a good combination of theory and practic. We had quite much assignments and this felt a bit much for an exchange student that also want to see the coutry.
For me, everything felt good and nice during my exchange, if I would have had to live alone it would probably have been another story. My conclusion is that this was the most interesting and fun time of my life!
I took a course at KI called Sjukgymnastik 7 - klinisk sjukgymnastik and this course was mostly practical. I had in total one month of theoretical and methodical education and the rest of the time was practic in clinic. As there was so many people in the course I experienced that the relationship to the teacher was quite impersonal but still they somehow find time for every student. My supervisors at both clinics were all really nice and at the last place I felt more like they were my working collegues. The student-patient relationship was also really good in Sweden because the patients were really interested in getting a student as they have more time for them than the working physiotherapists. I felt that the theoretical period before the clinic was really good because everything was fresh in mind going out in practice. I learned really much at my exchange in KI! In Finland we don't use as many tools of evaluation as we used in Sweden or at least in the same way. Somehow work felt much more based on scientifical research, of my experience we use what gives us clinical result in Finland. Even if we are getting better at scientifically proved methods. I learned how to use tools of evaluation, like questionnaires more. All of my experiences are also more on the fact that I did my exchange in the end of my studies, I could now see everything from a different light even if really grew in the role as a physiotherapist in Stockholm.