Clinical internships

As the Faculty of Medicine at UVic-UCC enters its third year, this is the first year that the course's first cohort of students, who are now in their third year, have completed the clinical internships stipulated in the course plan. Over six weeks in October and November, the students were fully integrated into the medical teams at several healthcare centres associated with the Faculty, who work closely with it and share its teaching goals.

These include acute care hospitals, primary healthcare, intermediate and social centres, as well as highly specialised centres, which are all located in the region around the University: in the Osona and Bages regions, where the students are taught at the facilities of the two territorial teaching units, as well as in the Anoia, Cerdanya, Garrotxa, Ripollès, Berguedà and Solsonès regions.

After spending more than two years working on theory and practice in classrooms, and occasionally coming into contact with healthcare centres, "this is the students' first opportunity to truly put their knowledge into practice and to put themselves to the test in a real professional environment", says Núria Obradors, Head of Studies of the bachelor's degree in Medicine. It is also "a great opportunity to take a closer look at the everyday routine of the profession they will want to be working in in a future that is not too far way, and to start seeing which specialist fields or areas of work they enjoy most," she adds.

Sixty students participated in this first phase of the internships. They included Artur Aymar, who did his internship at the internal medicine service of the University Hospital of Vic, Xavier Batalla, who worked at the primary healthcare centres of Artés and Santa Maria d'Oló, and Alba Herreros, who spent six weeks at the Sant Andreu Salut social healthcare centre in Manresa. After this initial experience (they will undertake three more internships before they graduate), they all agree that the practical focus has led them to approach the medical profession from a more human perspective, and increased their awareness of the commitment it involves.

The patient as the focus of work

It was no coincidence that Artur Aymar, from Barcelona, chose the University Hospital in Vic to carry out his first internship, since he was very certain about his preferences. "In a medium-sized hospital like this one I can deal with acute patients directly, and I feel very well integrated into the team because as a centre it is neither too big nor small," says Aymar, who was also certain that he wanted to spend time in the internal medicine service: "it's the specialist field that has made the greatest impression on me, and the internship confirmed that for me."

The student's everyday routine during the internship was usually intense, and always started with a clinical session with the internal medicine team. "We talked about the most difficult cases, new drugs and outpatients," he says. This was the step before visiting the patients, and the ideal time to fulfil the most specific objectives in these first internships - "learning how to do an anamnesis properly, or in other words, knowing what to ask the patient and how to do a proper physical examination." At the end of the day, when the doctors were writing their reports, Aymar's role was even more active: "My supervising doctor asked his colleagues if I could do my internship autonomously, under supervision, with patients whose cases I wasn't familiar with," says Aymar.

"We had done a lot of theory in class, but when you see the patient, you realise that the focus of your work is not the disease itself, but instead the patient, the person, who has an economic, social, family or cultural background which has an impact on them," says Aymar. "I've learned about the more human side of the profession," he concludes.

Confirmation of the value of theory

For Xavier Batalla, from Manresa, doing his first internship at a primary health care centre was crucial for "having a more holistic view of the patient" and for "being able to see all types of cases, ranging from traumatology to oncology, by way of nephrology and other specialist fields." At the Artés and Santa Maria d'Oló primary healthcare centres, he experienced "real proximity to the patients" and was able to see "how the difficulties some of them experience affect their lives and consequently how they are able to cope with their illness."

However, above all, Batalla saw for himself how despite theory and practice being "two worlds that are separate and at the same time closely linked, they need each other." According to the student, "during those weeks I realised that the syllabus we follow is focused in the right direction, that our training is good and that we are laying the groundwork, understanding a series of things that will enable us to understand what we are doing when we deal with patients in the third year."

Xavier Batalla worked as a technician in an outpatient unit before studying Nursing and continuing in higher education, and he is currently working in a plastic surgery unit. This professional experience in the healthcare field has encouraged him to work towards becoming a doctor.

Batalla has worked in other areas of medicine, beginning as a technician in an outpatient unit and then studying nursing and various master's and postgraduate degrees, until he decided that he wanted to broaden his knowledge with a bachelor's degree in Medicine. "Plastic surgery still appeals to me a great deal, but I'm discovering other areas of the profession that I hadn't thought about so now, in the third year, I'm open to everything," he concludes.