Russian experience in Finland

This story is brought to you by a student from Russia studying in Finland.

I am originally from Russia. Before coming to Finland I studied linguistics and foreign languages at the university in Saint-Petersburg. After graduation I realized that being a translator in the environment where everyone is using computer vocabularies is senseless. I always wanted to do something helpful and effective for people, this is how I chose nursing.

I really like studying in Lahti and at Lahti University of Applied Sciences. The atmosphere in this city is very calm and peaceful. As for school I can say that theoretical and practical parts in the Faculty of Social and Health Care are organized well. Lectures are performed by real health care workers, so all the material which is given is important during clinical trainings.

Although theory which we study at school is interesting I can say that practical part that we are doing at the hospitals is more exciting. For me all the clinical trainings which I’ve done were a positive experience. The only difficulty there is language and sometimes the attitude of other nurses towards students, especially foreigners.

During practice we usually have two mentors: one is a nurse who is guiding and helping the student and another one is a teacher from school who is also helping the student, assessing and evaluating. Those relationships between nurse-mentor – student and school mentor – student are very important.

In fact, during first clinical training nurse-mentor is the one, who helps student to start acting and thinking like a nurse, to develop confidence in what student is doing. As to school-mentor he/she somehow leads the student on the right path by assessing and discussing the goals, which is also very important. In my opinion the only improvement in clinical training that can be done is to encourage new students to learn Finnish language right after they started their studies in our faculty, because as I already said the main problem during practice is language barrier and students should understand that without knowing Finnish language training at the hospital is not that exciting and interesting, but very hard and stressful.