Family Doctor

In Estonia they have a family doctor system. It works something like this: You come to any family doctor's (or perearst as they are called here) office and ask them if they have a free space for you on their patient list. There is a maximum amount of patients one perearst can have, this is regulated by law. Each perearst gets money from the state (as I have understood it) for each patient on their list. Because these doctors work is like a private business and they need to get all appliances themselves there are a lot of perearstcenters where a lot of these work.

As a patient, you will always visit the same perearst, and this doctor also is the "first contact" in your health care chain. He/she will send you to specialists and other medical investigations.

Today I got to be with a female perearst for 3 hours, it is included in our course "Perearst". Earlier I was quite sceptic to this system, mainly because I just was not used to it. In Finland you can be glad if you can see a doctor the same week, and you will always visit a different one.

But, I find this system very nice, now that I have seen it in action. The doctors have a very personal relationship with their patients, they know their names and faces and their history. Also these are the doctors "in charge" and specialist have to contact and consult with the perearst during treatment and investigations. The doctors also want to follow up their patients more and do easily give second appointments. Very nice, thumbs up. Maybe I will have to get one now too :)

The time went by really fast, but I did not get to do anything practical, the patients visiting were mostly follow up patients, being to other specialists and consulting back to their own doctors.

Thumbs up also for my lost and found Estonian language self-esteem. It was killed this autumn due to a bad teacher, now that I ditched her I suddenly speak more and understand better what people talk to me. Väga hea. But I find it harder to keep my languages apart. I sometimes just can not speak any language, not even Swedish. Yesterday I only knew Finnish. Today I mixed my Finnish with Estonian. I hope it is only temporary.

I and my roomie will continue with weekly challenges after our 500gram per day challenge. We will chose one for each week and also what kind of prize we will get after a completed challenge. After this week's challenges, which stops in Tuesday, we will go and eat McDonalds :P Looking forward to it already!

For those visiting Tartu sometime and like Sushi; go to Tasku's sushi bar which can be found on the third floor above Cinamon's café! Yummy Asian food that is not eating big holes in your purse.
For a nice cake, go to Tasku's second floor right left from the escalater. Take the Napolia kook, enjoy!
(Now you also know what I did with K after our perearst practical. Also we avoided studying by going to some shops. Now I sit here bloging rather then studying. Does it sound familiar?)

On Monday we will have kontrolltöö/test in Microbiology. We will have to get acquainted with these guys:

Staphylococcus aureus


Vibrio cholera

Microbiology is a very very interesting subject and one that I will need in my everyday praxis later as a doctor. But there are a LOT of details, and a lot of similarities between the bacteria. Another problem is how to get all those antibiotics into my head (last semester's knowledge...). No other choice but to continue where I stopped yesterday.

A nice weekend to you all!