There’s a lot to learn in medical school — they say it’s like drinking from a fire hose.
But there’s nothing like what three adventurous fourth-year medical students from UNMC learned during their international medicine rotation in Shanghai, China.
Like how to wash your clothes in a bathtub using chopsticks to create a whirlpool and a little agitation in order to get your clothes clean.
Or where the best Mongolian noodles are — in their case, a five-minute walk away from their hotel on the Jiao Tong University campus.
Or to never, ever drink a hot juice sold by a street vendor no matter how good your new Chinese friend tells you it is.
“It tastes and smells like stinky feet,” said Emily Signor, who with fellow medical students, Skye O’Hearn and Marshall Bahr, learned the hard way why it’s called stinky bean juice.
“A very traditional drink enjoyed mostly by the older generations in China,” their friend Rao Yao, a student at Jiao Tong University, told them between giggles.
Signor, O’Hearn and Bahr spent a month learning what the Chinese health care system is like, all while learning how to navigate the streets of Shanghai.
“It’s one of the best rotations I’ve been on,” Bahr said.
“Everyone is so nice. The hospitality is unreal. I never felt unsafe or unwelcome,” O’Hearn added.
While on a surgical rotation in the hospital, the students were a little surprised to see the medical staff and surgeons barefoot and wearing crocs in the operating room.
“It’s too expensive to use the disposable shoe coverings like we do in the U.S., so they sterilize the slip-on shoes after each use and place them in a bin in the surgical bays,” Bahr said.
The students also enjoyed a little acupuncture lesson.
“It’s an art,” Signor said. “The needles are so tiny you can’t just poke it into your arm or they’ll just bend. There’s a specific way to do it.”
The three had so much fun in China that they are signed up to do another international medical rotation, this one through the department of internal medicine, in South Africa in February.
“I guess you could say we are adventurous,” Bahr said. “But we decided, when would we ever get another chance to go to China or South Africa, so why not?”