My path towards doing an exchange during my medical studies at KI is somewhat different from most students. I started my medicine studies at the age of 31, having already a family with husband and 2 small children. My husband got the opportunity to go abroad to do a post-doctoral fellowship for 2 years in Christchurch, New Zealand. It didn’t take us much thought to take the opportunity of a life-time to move abroad as a family, but it took us over one year to plan such a big move. I had one year of medical studies left, and we were expecting our third child. My primary focus for the next two years living abroad would be to stay at home with our newborn and to support our two other children who would start school in an english speaking country. But I also wanted to make sure to get some experience myself from the health care system of New Zealand, so I decided that making an exchange period of 8 weeks during my last semester at the medical program would be a great opportunity for me. I have been an exchange student in Australia for one year during high school so I already had a good experience from living abroad and I think that contributed to our curiosity to live abroad as a family and also get my children to experience another country.
Since it was already decided that we would move to Christchurch, I looked for an exchange with the University of Otago that I found out had parts of their medical studies in Christchurch, even though the majority is based in Dunedin. Once I was accepted for exchange, I got in contact with the University of Otago who helped me arrange a clinical rotation at the hospital in Christchurch. Because I was already living in Christchurch a while before I started my exchange period, I was also flexible in terms of when I could do my clinical rotation and I think that in turn gave me the opportunity to choose more freely what specialty I wanted to do my rotation in.
VISA
Since I was moving to New Zealand for a duration of 2 years and together with my family, the VISA process was different for me compared to if you only go for the 8 weeks of studies. I could apply for a visitor’s VISA which gave me the freedom to study for up to 3 months. The VISA procedure is quite straight forward with good information on the immigration of New Zealand home page (www.immigration.govt.nz). However, do the VISA application well in advance (6-8 weeks) of your travel and allow for 2-4 weeks for approval. The papers are sent to the Immigration office in London and you need to send your passport there too. Flights should be booked before applying for the VISA.
FLIGHT
It’s a very long and expensive travel to New Zealand, so when you get this fantastic opportunity to go, I would suggest you make the very most out of it and plan for at least a couple of weeks extra time before or after your exchange for travels. There are several routes to fly to NZ, we flew with Lufthansa/Singapore Airlines Frankfurt-Singapore-Christchurch. It was a very comfortable and smooth travel even though it took us almost 30h to reach destination. Another common route is via Dubai and Sidney/Melbourne. Look for good prices for flights well in advance since it varies quite a lot.