Helsinki day 1: Many places.

Our days in Helsinki were the longest in the whole course, with many different activities and rushing from one place to the other. The first day in the Capital of Finland, we went to the Finnish Medical Association (the National Medical Trade Union), then to the Helsinki University Hospital to see the central clinical laboratory corresponding to the whole Helsinki University Hospital District and finally we had a very interesting lunch-meeting, invited by Dr. Turunen, from the Duodecim (The Finnish Medical Scientific Association). It is difficult to talk about everything we did in too little words, so I will refer to the most important from my own point of view.

In the Finnish medical association I could notice how strong this Medical Trade Union is. They have a huge political power from the fact that almost all doctors practicing in Finland are members. Other interesting fact is the quality of the information they have regarding to the medical professionals: they have very accurate statistics about salaries, occupation and working conditions which allows them to know very well the situation of Physicians in Finland, facilitating the task of safeguarding their professional and economical interests, as stated in its declaration of aims and principles. In our country trade unions in general are very weak, and the medical one is not the exception. Enrollment is far from being universal, and its political power is not very strong.

Next, we went to the clinical laboratory of the Helsinki University Hospital. They have a very high level of technology, specially regarding to automatisation of the processes. Of course it is necessary because of the high number of people that are served by this lab only. Again, technology is the same as you can find in my country, but usually coverage is not as good as here, because of inequities. Again, the private sector have better availability of services than the public one, limiting the access for people of lower income.
Finally, the discussion with the person from the Duodecim was particulary interesting for me, because I am interested in working in some kind of collaborative study with people from other countries in the issue of the burden of caregivers of people with dementias. I think that international collaboration is important, because talking to people who comes from other settings and realities allows you to view the seme problems from a different perspective and to figure out different solutions. Collaborating is always interesting, you learn a lot from people who came from other backgrounds!