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 28th
It's been a while since I submitted my last report. This is due to the fact that we got company from the men of the Urgenta Foundation who arrived a few days ago. They invited us for a weekend to Sarata, a small village just outside (40 km.) the city of Sibiu. They had planned a visit to a Romanian family, which they're friends with for some time now. After some deliberation we were more than welcome to stay over.
We left on Saturday at 4 pm. The roads were all fine (just like Western Europe), but then all of a sudden Arnold took a turn and we were on a road which I didn't consider to be a road! No pavement or whatsoever, but it turned out to be the road to village we were going to visit. When we arrived at the village we were all shook up because of all the holes in the road. It's like off-road driving with a non 4-wheel drive. In the village itself, there's no tarmac or pavement to be found too. Bridges over the local creek consist of only a few tree trunks with a few boards. I think you don't want to be over weighted and cross these bridges.
The moment we arrived, all activity stopped abruptly and we had to greet the entire family. And when I say "the entire family", I mean the ENTIRE family: great-grandmother, grandpa and grandma, children, nephews, cousins. Then the neighbors stopped by and grandma's sister. After all this was done, we were invited to enter the house and the first bottle of "tuica" was put on the table. Everybody was supposed to drink along so we followed Arnold's advice and swallowed the whole drink in one time. Ad Fundum!! A few minutes later it still burned in my throat. What Arnold didn't tell us, was the custom of immediately refilling an empty glass. You learn fast over here...
It was time to get some zzzz's. We ended up at grandma's sister. She made a bed for us but Cailia and Delia had to do their own. They slept in the same room as we did. The hospitality of these people is just incredible! The next day at diner, we were asked at least five times if we've had enough. Actually, we didn't have enough... we were stuffed!!!
Arnold took us for a one and a half hour drive to Balea the next day. Balea is a mountain and it's truly astonishing. A ramshackle cabin took us to the top and there we found another great thing about Romania. The landscape and nature are breathtaking over here, really amazing!!
Back to our placement duties. We get to do a lot more at the Physiotherapy-II department. We treat patients like we're accustomed to in the Netherlands. A number of things are done the same as in the Netherlands, other things are clearly different. The last couple of weeks we've seen some of our methods carried out by Romanian therapists. This is nice to see, finally we came to the level of exchanging knowledge, experiences and ideas. Last week, I had to show the way I treat a shoulder injury to a therapist because she had seen me doing this in quite another way.
We've made an analysis of the exercises the patients are submitted to for our graduation project. We decided to narrow it down to patients with arthrosis. We simply don't have the time to expand our project to other diseases and syndromes. After the initial analysis, we did some literature studies about possible exercises and their correlated results. We did this to provide "evidence" to the physicians and therapists and to explain why one therapy has a better prognosis than the other.
Next week, we'd like to spend a day with dr. Luca on his rounds and his anamnesis interviews with patients. We have to ask him about this. Fact is, the doctors examine the patients and decide which therapy is appropriate. The physiotherapists carry out the prescribed therapies. Hopefully, the doctors will prescribe some of our exercise schemes in the near future.