Medical Internship at Ruijin Hospital

I did a medical internship at the Ruijin hospital (located in the French concession area of Shanghai) for a month from July 20th to August 20th. I spent two weeks at the Ophthalmology department and the other two weeks at the Gastroenterology (GI) department. It was mostly observing surgeries and patient care while shadowing several doctors.

When I was at the Ophthalmology department, I was lucky to shadow a doctor who did his fellowship at the School of Medicine of institution where I went as Undergrad.
In the morning, I watched a lot of surgeries including cataract (most common), glaucoma, LASIK, and lazy eye etc. Then I would go out for a lunch to enjoy some food in Shanghai. Quite often, you'll have a chance to personalize with the people there by having lunch together. In the afternoon, I spent most of my time in the Outpatient center to watch doctors providing eye care (diagnosis, prescribing glasses etc) to patients with eye-related conditions.

The time I spent at the GI department was quite a unique experience for me. In the morning, I would join with medical students and go around the ward to learn about many different conditions and proper way of managing patients with severe condition. I didn’t understand what the doctors were saying since I don't speak any Chinese, but doctors were kind enough to translate for me. In fact, a lot of them were pretty articulate in English, and it was interesting how I was able to pick up what they're saying through key medical terms (in English) they used. In the afternoon, I observed many surgeries, endoscopy or sometimes I would go over to the outpatient center.

In a typical day, I had to wake up early to get to the hospital around 8am, and leave around 5 pm. Once in a while, I had a chance to leave early when there's not much patients. After 5pm, I got to socialize with other volunteers from all over the world and enjoying Shanghai.

I really enjoyed my time in Shanghai. I loved my internship since I was engaging in areas relevant to areas of my interest. Also, I got to build up new connections outside of U.S., and make new friends. In fact, a lot of volunteers were from Europe, all of my roommates were Europeans.

In addition, I had an opportunity to learn any similarities and differences between the system there and here. The problem I had while I was there was the language barrier. I felt it would have been ideal if I can actually understand and comprehend Chinese.

The last advise that I have is that “expect the unexpected.” I wasn’t very familiar with china in general since it was my first time there, but it was definitely worth a visit!