Midwives and Maternity Hospital

Our health care visits started this morning with a lecture about the training and work of midwives in family planning, reproductive education, and pre- and postnatal care. Our host at the Midwifery program of Helsinki Polytechnic Stadia, Ms. Sirkka Pietilainen, ftold us about the multiple roles of midwives in various aspects of Finns' family and reproductive life. In fact, in Finland, much like in Sweden, pre- (or antenatal, as they call it here) and postnatal care as well as labor and delivery are performed by nurse midwives. In fact, OBs are involved only in case of complications or high risk pregnancies.

After our lecture, we continued to the Katiloopisto Maternity Hospital (located in the same building as the Polytechnic), where we were given a tour of the "birth ward" and the neonatal ICU. After having learned that twin births are not particularly common in the hospital, we happened upon three sets of them within half an hour (!). The nurses in our group, Rachel and Janiel, had some excellent questions to ask to help us compare how babies are born in the U.S. and Finland. I am sure our hosts also learned something new from those discussions.

The afternoon was spent shopping for souvenirs and resting. Tomorrow we will learn more about family life and policy and take a look at some important public health projects in Finland.

Helsinki ... finally!

Oh, boy. We're finally in Helsinki and I am finally able to get on the Internet. My computer needed to have some settings changed, but it took two days for me to figure out which settings. It's nearly midnight on Monday and I must go to sleep, but before that, a quick overview of the last three days.

Saturday morning we went back to the old town in Stockholm and had a closer look at the place without the cold wind and the jet lag. We visited the King's armory, which has some amazing pieces of Swedish history, including several Kings' bloody clothes (they often met their demise in war), swords, and armors. It's definitely worth seeing. Then we got our luggage and took the red line to the Silja ferry. We started with a dinner buffet on the boat and then admired the karaoke of some not-so-musically-talented fellow passengers. Lucky for us, the Eurovision song contest was broadcast live from Belgrad, Serbia, and for the following three hours, the ship's Idol wannabes had to stay quiet (Russia won, by the way, and will host the next year's contest). Others in our group decided to see the Ironman movie on board and got to bed a tiny bit earlier than the Eurovision group, a fact evident the following morning when we arrived in Helsinki.

So far, Helsinki's weather has been great, and we've seen quite a bit of the city, mostly riding on trams. This morning we visited the Parliament of Finland and a 250-yr. old island fortress, Suomenlinna, outside Helsinki. Our health care visits start tomorrow at the Helsinki Polytechnic Stadia, where we will learn about the training of midwives in Finland. After that we will visit a maternity hospital. Pictures and more comments coming up on Wednesday. Moikka!

Uppsala on Friday

After Thursday's visit back to Stockholm's County Council and a morning of further discussion of patient safety initiatives introduced by Marion Lindh, we had an enjoyable lunch and a photo-op with our hosts, led by our politician, Stig Nyman. Our meeting ended with an agreement on the many challenges on health care systems presented by new information technologies and the more educated and mobile patient in this rapidly globalizing world.

After the meeting, we all split up. I picked up Chanelle from Arlanda airport and brought her back, happy to finally get here but jetlagged and in serious need of a shower. The rest of the group went their merry ways, most ending up checking out the new Indiana Jones movie.

Friday's trip to Uppsala was a walk back in history. We saw the Viking graves, the Gustavianum (Uppsala Universitet's museum), and Carl von Linne's botanical gardens. The university is one of the oldest in northern Europe (est. in the 15th century) and has a centuries' tradition in medicine. On the way back our dear driver got a little lost and, to keep us entertained, he told us he once chauffered a Nobel laureate. . . that was as close as any one of us had ever been to one.

Tomorrow we head out to Finland on the Silja Line ferry. We are looking forward to the continuing good weather--and Finnish chocolate.

Americans in Stockholm - Day 4

Today we had a chance to get away from school work for a day and to enjoy the beautiful day in Stockholm.  We started out in Skansen, the open air museum where one can walk around and observe how the Swedes used to live in history.  We saw small huts with grassy roofs, a bakery, glass blowing, and a zoo of Scandinavian animals. . . a furry rabbit, brown bear cubs, moose, and boars.  And, naturally, we sampled bakery goods whenever we saw them for sale--at the tiny bakery shop on Skansen and, later, at the NK department store.  We also visited the Vasa museum.  Vasa ship sank on her maiden voyage in 1628 and remained under water until Swedish divers found it (333 years later!), and it was raised in 1961.  The place was amazing! The whole ship is there, put together from pieces (95% from the original) that were found in the muddy waters of Stockholm harbor.  Definitely worth visiting when in Stockholm.

I should mention that after all that history, our group members were ready to embrace their inner tourists by raiding the Made in Sweden shop on Klarabergsgatan and the little shops of souvenirs on Drottningsgatan.  At nightfall, we split up to two groups: one group dined at McDonald's, while the other found a little more exotic fare at the Sushi/Korean restaurant. The last two members of the group stayed behind in the city to get their fingers frozen at the Icebar 

inside the Nordic Sea hotel . . . a very cool place.  

We look forward to our last group member, Chanelle, joining us tomorrow; she is en route to Stockholm as I write this.  On Thursday morning, we head back to the Stockholm County Council to learn more about their health care system.  We have been promised a discussion with one of the working County politicians and we're racking out brains to come up with good questions to ask.  Hejssan! 

Karolinska and County Council--Stockholm Day 3

Our first meeting today (Tuesday) was at the Karolinska University Hospital in Solna, where we met Dr. Erna Petterson, the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief of Research at Karolinska, Dr. Sten Lindahl. We learned about patient quality and safety as well as about the challenges in research and medical education at the university hospital.

Four years ago, Karolinska Hospital merged with the Huddinge university hospital and the new, combined hospital has nearly 15,000 employees, 1, 700 beds, 99,000 admissions and 1.3 million patient visits per year--and a budget of almost 2 billion dollars. Yes, it is big, and, indeed, its 68 departments present quite a challenge to a person such as Dr. Lindahl, whose job it is to think about how to redesign and synchronize the many specialties into more functional areas of research. We were warmly welcomed by our hosts and treated to a fascinating presentation by Dr. Petterson about maintaining continuous quality control of health care delivery and ensuring patient safety. We also learned that the the hospital is under the jurisdiction of the Stockholm County Council, which just happened to be our next place to visit.

After having barely finished our lunches at Karolinska, we jumped into the bus and rushed to Landstingshuset, the home of Stockholm's County Council. Ms. Gunnel Blomgren came to meet us at the lobby and took us upstairs to a meeting room that once served as a military hospital ward (an appropriate place for discussing health care). The afternoon's informational package we received is too multifaceted to explain in detail; let's just say that we now have a pretty good idea about--among other things--the financing of health care system at the county level, the health care needs assessment for Stockholm County population, and the inner workings of the health care reimbursement system. Thanks also to Gunnel's colleagues Michael Hogberg and Milan Knezevic.

After two information-packed days, tomorrow we'll transform from students to tourists and visit Vasa Museum and Skansen. We have much information to digest and reflect upon while strolling around in the open air museum ... unless it rains.

Second day in Stockholm

We woke up to a beautiful, sunny morning...what a relief from the cold and rainy Sunday. After breakfast, we headed to our first appointment at the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions. This organization functions as the employer union of counties and municipalities in Sweden. We listened to a lecture by Ingvor Bjugard who introduced us to the governmental system of Sweden and particularly to the local level democracy. This was an awesome introduction to the health care system from local to national level and provided us with a general view of the roles and functions of the various levels of health care governance. We discussed some recent developments in health care and learned about what the national health insurance the system provides for Swedish citizens.

We also learned that the Swedish government is now made up of four parties that represent a shift from a socialist toward a more market-oriented economic policies. These policies include some degree of privatizing health care delivery, the topic of our visit at the Department of Psychology at Stockholms Universitet. There we met with a group of graduate student researchers and their advisor, Johnny Hellgren, to discuss their study of the impact of ownership type (non-profit vs. for-profit) on hospital employees and their work environment. What they have found so far in their on-going study is that the occupational group most affected by the change in ownership type (from public funding to for-profit hospital) were the registered nurses. Indeed, we had an interesting discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of the entire health care systems of Sweden and the U.S.

We had a great time at Stockholms Universitet and were treated to a delicious lunch by the Psychology Department. Special thanks go to Helena Falkenberg, Niklas Hansen, and Stephan Baraldi for being such gracious hosts. We all bought Stockholm University t-shirts to take home. This evening we will explore the city's many restaurants and walk around the shopping areas... then it's an early bed time as we have another busy day tomorrow -- a visit to one of the topmost medical research institutes in the world, Karolinska Hospital.

We're in Stockholm

The flight over went well, despite the lack of sleep which has continued until the present (6pm local time), so that many of us are on our 30th+ hour of being awake. In one day, we have already seen quite a bit of the city. After getting our luggage to the hotel (some of us did not get their luggage, but they'll be delivered by tomorrow morning to the hotel), we went back to the central railway station, T-Centralen, and took a tour on the "Hop On Hop Off" bus. The bus drove us around the Skansen open air museum and dropped us off at Kungsholmen, the King's Castle, from where we strolled around Gamla Stan (the Old Town) and had pizza and a warm place to sit down for a while.

It is freezing here, today's temperature has hovered around +5 C, which is about 40, but feels like 30-something with the wind factor. It is always windy in Stockholm, just like in Helsinki, because both cities lie on the sea coast. Shay and Rachel bought some warm clothes at the H&M to survive the elements, if temperatures do not rise in the near future. We were told in the train that last week, it was 80 degrees and sunny...a typical May here much as it is in Utah.

Our first visit will be tomorrow, we'll be at the University of Stockholm. So in order to get up bright and early, we must get some shuteye soon. Tomorrow, we'll post pictures. Stay tuned.

Ten days and counting

Our trip is getting closer. Ken sent around a list of things to do before departure and the most recent version of our itinerary. It looks very exciting. If you are bringing a laptop with you, make sure to bring an ethernet cable for our Helsinki hotel (no wireless but a broadband connection in all rooms). And do not forget your camera, we need to illustrate this blog as well. :)

Welcome to the WSU Study Abroad: Sweden/Finland blog

Hello everyone,

We have now created a blog for our upcoming trip to Stockholm and Helsinki, May 2008. Please bookmark this page and share it with your friends and family. We hope to be updating the blog throughout our trip.