Physiotherapy Graduation Placement University Hospital Sibiu, Romania
Late November 2004, the Urgenta Foundation was contacted by two physiotherapy students (Mariëlla and Froukje) of the Avans University Breda to inquire about a possible placement abroad, more specifically Romania. Off course, Urgenta was willing to introduce them to some people in Romania and all arrangements were made. The students are doing a 4 months placement at the Physiotherapy II department of the University Hospital in the city of Sibiu.
They've left for Romania the first week of February and will be home somewhere around the end of May. The technicians team of Urgenta will be able to pay them a visit during the upcoming development projects of April.
The students keep us posted from Romania and inform us about their adventures and experiences...
February 21st | March 11th | March 28th | April 22nd |
March 11th
On March the 1st, we've had our first experience with a Romanian tradition: Martisor. This is a celebration of the end of winter and the beginning of spring. According to this custom, all men have to buy presents for the ladies. These presents are also called "Martisor" and could be anything as long as they have a white and red ribbon on them. White stands for the end of winter and red stands for the beginning of spring. Prior to this celebration day, all kinds of stands were placed downtown where these presents were for sale. At first we didn't understand a bit of all this but it turned out to be a very nice day so we didn't mind.
It was nice to be involved in this tradition. Several patients offered us a martisor. Simona (the English speaking physiotherapist) and dr. Luca joined the party as well. If you receive a martisor, you're supposed to pin it on your clothes. So to accelerate our integration process, we wore the martisors for a day. Some Romanian women wear them for a month! We can't wait for the next Romanian tradition...
On March the 8th, it's Women's Day. This day is extensively celebrated over here in Romania. We started with diner in a nice restaurant on Saturday. All personnel from the physiotherapy II building were present. Off course, we did some steps too. We even joined a traditional dance! You've seen it before: a dance where everybody forms a large circle. Point is: everybody did a different dance, so how are we (non-integrated Dutchies) supposed to know what steps to take? Another thing that totally differs from our home country, is the fact that everybody just starts eating his or her diner. Even if only half of the invited people are present. Maybe it's because some people didn't arrive on time. The party started at 4 o'clock and the last one arrived at half past five.
Besides all the partying around here, we still have a job to do. More and more, we're doing therapeutic work ourselves. Especially when Simona is around. She speaks English so we can explain what we are doing and, more importantly, why we're doing it. The other physiotherapist doesn't speak English so it's harder for us to communicate with her, but our Romanian is improving so there is hope. Thanks to our expanding vocabulary we are able to communicate with patients on a very basic level. All our thanks go out to Alexandra who relentlessly teaches us the fine art of speaking Romanian. Her lessons give us the chance to actually understand Romanian a little bit, provided it's spoken at a low pace.
In the last couple of weeks, we've drawn up a project plan for our graduation. We decided to make exercise schedules for the most common syndromes and diseases. Dr. Luca approved with our plan and thought it was a good idea. We already started to observe and record the current exercises patients are subjected to. We'll be doing this for the next two weeks. Then we'll analyze all these exercises and start making exercise programs. In the end, we'd like to try to implement these exercise programs. I'm curious if and to what extent we'll succeed at that.