Back in Finland

Hello everybody!!

Its been a hectic few weeks back in Finland. Tons of assignments and a lot of other this to do. I've been thinkin about these assignments i have and i should write page after page about different kind of evidence based nursing stuff but i dont have to reflect on anything. I really think that the assignments should be shorter but we should reflect more on things we reading the literature.

I miss all you guys. Hope to see you soon!!!!!

Working hard or harldy working??

Today we discussed/debated about the toolkit were going to present in the student conference. It was interensting. Some problems appeared with time and groupwork. A big issue was time and i think there are two factors that cause that the time table and the fact that we students are allways late and dont start anything when we say we do. Becouse last week was mainly just reflecting and getting to know other cultures and nations we have a lot to do this week. Maybe for the future the two weeka could be more evenly balanced. ( I know that its easier said than done) And i think we the students need to realize that we dont have that much time and really need to get this toolkit done and cooperate with each other.(and again its easier said than done.) For to night i dont have answers only questions and a lot of stuff to think about!!

The title is only a joke we are all working hard!! I know it.

Student assessment

When a mentor evaluates a student in Finland there is a possibility that the student gets evaluated by his/hers character. Thats wrong becouse your character shouldn't have anything to do with nursing if you can be professional. Becouse we need nurses who are strong as whole person not nurses who good with practical skills but can't talk to patients.The diagram i made has no theoretic base its just how i feel. So if the student is allways evaluated based on his/hers character she might not understand that there is a problem with her, becouse nobody hasn't given her any really usefull feedback.

Malta and England have really strict bases in evaluating students but Finland doesn't. So i think we Finnish should take something from the English ja Maltese. The universities should promise that nurses who come from their university have at least basic skills. There should be a norm for all the student that after they graduate from the university they know certain things

Nervous or Not

If i went for an exchange course to a new country outside of scandinavia one main thing i would worry is the cultural diffrence in nursing between my country and for example Italy. And as we discussed in this course students from different countries have different rights when were doing our practical training. And i think places we do our practical training might not know a lot about Finnish nursing.

So to lower the pressure of going to a new country, and narrow the gap between two different kind of cultures the student could do little presetation about him/herself and tell something about his/hers culture and about nursing in general. And using these "new" tool like flips, photos for example. And the schools and wards could tell a little about themselfs, something like what kind of ward it is and what students can do in that ward. This might help the ward and the student understand each other easier.

First few days

I was wondering the social differences of Finland and Malta. And what i mostly see is Finnish people aren't as social as the Maltese except after few beers. We were talking about this with Harri and Eve during lunch yesterday and i think Harri had an very exciting point. In Finland we start to study English on the third year of our school so we are around 10 years old. But from the very beginning the teacher corrects us if we say something wrong and most of the time doesn't remember to praise us when we get something right. Most of the test are made to test our english writing skils not our speaking skils. And when you are working or communicating in a multicultural enviroment as we are now, the most important thing isn't that we are speaking fluent English but to get every experience out of this wonderful opportunity.

I think student exchanges are great but i still think the exchange students dont get everything out from their exchange becouse they only interact with other exchange students and in finland with international tutors. But they still have to go to our courses and come to our lectures. In my opinion when you go to a school that is envolved with student exchange the student should commit their selves to make the exchange students feel welkome to our school. And every time an exchange student begings a course with a new group there should be a team bulding exercise so they can work and bond as a team.

Lets start with these thoughts and continue later...

Getting started

Dont have a sprint race with your friends after a beer case!!