Not as I thought it would be
No it's not gonna be an other depressing text about how I'm alone and homesick.
I'm now at week two at Vinmec and yes I'm starting to find my way around and I'm aloud to do some more things (not much but still it's progress), help out with some of the patients, discuss what I would have done in the different situations and so on. The thing is that the first day I came here I sat down and talked to the head of department and the head physiotherapist and we talked about my goals, what kind of patients they had here in the hospital and a lot of questions about Sweden. But since that day I feel a bit like they got a bit stuck on what I would like to write my thesis about and not so much that I said that I'm interested in learning and seeing as much as possible on the side of the thesis subject as well. The thing is also as I wrote before that I changed the subject of my thesis when I came here because of that they didn't have so many patients in this area right now, but said that they had a lot of patients in the new area. And yes they have a lot of these patients, all the day I see them in the waiting room but they don't come to see the physiotherapists. I mean they can have 15 patients every day and I have seen the physiotherapists work with 3, it's 3 good patients cause they come everyday witch mean that I really can observe them and see if I can see any difference. But what happens with the other 12 patients everyday? Well they come to see the rehab doctor that evaluates them and sends them for tests before they have an operation and after that they go home. I hope that they go to some physiotherapist maybe closer to where they live but I don't know.
I'm now at week two at Vinmec and yes I'm starting to find my way around and I'm aloud to do some more things (not much but still it's progress), help out with some of the patients, discuss what I would have done in the different situations and so on. The thing is that the first day I came here I sat down and talked to the head of department and the head physiotherapist and we talked about my goals, what kind of patients they had here in the hospital and a lot of questions about Sweden. But since that day I feel a bit like they got a bit stuck on what I would like to write my thesis about and not so much that I said that I'm interested in learning and seeing as much as possible on the side of the thesis subject as well. The thing is also as I wrote before that I changed the subject of my thesis when I came here because of that they didn't have so many patients in this area right now, but said that they had a lot of patients in the new area. And yes they have a lot of these patients, all the day I see them in the waiting room but they don't come to see the physiotherapists. I mean they can have 15 patients every day and I have seen the physiotherapists work with 3, it's 3 good patients cause they come everyday witch mean that I really can observe them and see if I can see any difference. But what happens with the other 12 patients everyday? Well they come to see the rehab doctor that evaluates them and sends them for tests before they have an operation and after that they go home. I hope that they go to some physiotherapist maybe closer to where they live but I don't know.
So I think I will have to sit down with them again and talk because I think they didn't really understand me when we talked the first time. But in one way I don't know how to explain it to them in an other way. A other thing is the misunderstanding or maybe more of a expectation from my side was that they would speak much better English then they do (even do I have been told that Vietnamese English usually aren't so good), both because when you send a email to them you get a respond in perfect English and when I asked about the English of the staff in the hospital (if I needed a interpreter) they told me no, the staff speaks good English. And yes some of the staff is fluid in English but none that works at my department, some of them are good and I can talked with them but there are still many moments when I don't know how to talk to explain things because they don't understand me and if I try to make it very easy the whole thing just gets the wrong meaning. The positive thing is that most of the staff goes to English lessons at the hospital every week so they are really trying. But the fact remains that their English aren't so good that I had hoped and I'm thinking about get a interpeter any way, not so much for the regular days but when the days come and I will do my interviews, It's better to have a interpeter and get some hopefully good answers then to spend most of the inteerview trying to explain the questions.
One other thing I have to talk to them about is if there is some possibilities to be more involved in the patients, cause as it is right now, I'm just walking around looking and asking if they are doing anything intresting and mostly the patients gets some kind of electrotherapy and if they just show me how the machine works I can do that.
I have this feeling that when you study to become physiotherapist in Vietnam you don't det to go out on clinical rotations to see and work with real patients but I don't know if it's like this. But everytime there comes a new patient they ask me if I have ever seen this kind of patient and it can be very basic patients like lower back pain, knee arthrosis, hip replacement, femur fractures and so on and these patients are some of the most common patients in physiotherapy and almost all of us in Sweden gets to see these patients through school or our clinical rotations. So I get a bit confused some times when they ask me these questions cause for me it's a matter of course to have seen these patients in the end of your education.