Saturday, September 8, 2012

Short Study Tour

My Medical Practice and Policy left on our short study tour to western Denmark on Monday, and spent 2 nights in 2 different cities - Vejle and Århus - doing both cultural and medical activities. There are 20 of us in our class, and we were accompanied by Henrik, my biology of cancer teacher, and Stephanie our TA.

We first took a bus to a place called Koldinghus, one of the original castles in Denmark. We got a guided tour of the castle which was interesting (but somewhat anticlimatic because the castle had burned down in the 18th century and there wasn't much original stuff left).

After that, we went to the Monkey Trail, which I was really looking forward to since me and my roommate Mathias found a monkey hat in our apartment's junk bin... so I brought it to wear on the ropes course. Our class really bonded with each other after attempting really tough rope obstacles, and though many of us got injured, I was the most proud of my huge bruise on my arm ;) It was beautiful outside and we were in the forest doing ziplines, climbing and jumping from platform to platform. Fun stuff. We then went to a hostel in Vejle and spent the night playing games and bonding some more. I really love our class and we all get along really well!!

Our group at the Monkey Trail! (Henrik my professor is in the monkey hat..)

The next morning, we woke up and went to visit the Jelling Stones, another cultural artifact in Denmark. It is supposedly the place in which Denmark got its name, and there are old stones with inscriptions about the start of Christianity in Denmark. We had a tour and got to climb the mound in which it is said that an old king of Denmark is buried under.

Next, we went to Aleris-Hamlet Hospitaler, a private hospital in Denmark. A little about the Danish healthcare system - all citizens of Denmark are covered under socialized medicine, and have access to a general practitioner for free any time they need. Everyone is assigned a GP based on their geographical location, but if you want to switch, you are allowed to as long as the GP you want doesn't have too many people in their area already assigned to them. If you get sick, you visit your GP and they can refer you to a specialist, also covered under the national health insurance. However, you cannot just go to a specialist whenever you want. The reason their system is so successful is because the GP's are the gatekeepers to the system, meaning that they handle most of the "trivial" issues, which is much more cost effective, and the specialists are only used when absolutely necessary. One may ask, isn't the wait time an issue? Well, Denmark has combatted this with the invention of private hospitals. There are several private hospitals that have opened, and citizens can buy their own health insurance to go to them if they do not want to wait for a public hospital. Additionally, if the waiting list to see a specialist is longer than 1 month, the Danish healthcare system will pay for you to see a private doctor. This is good and bad - the good thing is that it eliminates the long waiting lists and gives everybody access. However, it leaves less incentive for doctors to stay in the public sector if they will be funded by the government to work in the private sector. Still, many Danish people resent the private system and choose to stay public to withhold the integrity of the country.

SO, the first visit was with the CEO of the private hospital. He was very pretentious, and while he was a good speaker, you could tell he was trying to sell us on the concept of privatization - which, I do understand there is a need for. Public hospitals do not cover cosmetic surgery or elective surgery (such as some opthamology surgeries or cosmetic reconstruction). They also give competition to the public sector, which helps the public sector to constantly improve. What else is interesting is that their "right and left wing" governments all fall under the American Democratic party. So, if people are concerned that the government may be "too conservative", it is still liberal by American standards.
Our group at a port during a quick ice cream break :)

Next, we visited a GP. It was my favorite visit of the trip because he was so warm and friendly, and stressed that holistic treatments to illnesses are both cost effective and the best approach. At one point in the talk, he said "you guys look tired! everyone up!!" and taught us a Danish children's song and dance.  One interesting thing was that as a GP he takes care of people from "cradle to grave", so he is basically a pediatrician, ObGyn and internist all in one. I would love to do what he does, but it is hard because in the US, family medicine is very different (from what I've heard). I'll definitely need to do more research.

That night, we stayed in Århus, the second largest town in Denmark. I had a really good dinner with some friends, and there was a street festival going on so we just listened to live music and walked around. It was a really nice evening!!





The next day we went to Aros art museum, which has really weird modern art. After, we visited a research center, but it was really boring so I won't even explain it. We then ventured back to Copenhagen! All in all, it was a really great week and I"m looking forward to going to Vienna and Bratislava with the same group of kids in just a few weeks :)

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