Hannover!

This week was really exciting for me. On Wednesday and Thursday, I visited the medical school in Hannover for my 485 project. I had a really good time and learned a lot. On Wednesday, we spent our time shadowing medical students as they did their patient rounds in the nephrology unit. It was interesting to see the patient-doctor interactions and to learn about the different diseases each patient has. We even saw one patient who had IgA nephritis, a disease we had learned about the previous day in physiology. After the hospital, we spent our time with the veterinarian students that we were staying with that night. We all went to the grocery store, picked out a few grill-able items, went to the river, and cooked our dinner on a mini grill they brought with them. I had so much fun cooking food and learning more about them. I’m really glad Dr. Wasser organized that for us because they made the experience that much more memorable!

The next day, we started with patient rounds in the ICU. The most impacting thing I saw was a patient on ECMO but the doctors in Hannover had created a new method of keeping the patient awake while on ECMO. This is both strenuous on the patient and the staff but in the long run, it makes recovering easier for the patient. After we finished in the ICU, Austin and I made our way downstairs to the dialysis unit. Dr. Kielstein taught us a lot about the various types of dialysis and then he introduced us to his colleague, Mr. Nickel, who was an expert on the Genius dialysis machine. He taught us how to set one up, how to hook it in and out of the patient, and how the machine works. I really enjoyed learning more about dialysis since I hadn’t really been exposed to much concerning dialysis before. My favorite part of visiting Hannover was the dialysis unit. I really enjoyed learning so much!