Ambitious medical student is guest at our department

Ambitious medical student is guest at our department

“Hello, let me introduce myself, my name is Ilaria Viozzi and I am an Italian medical student.

My first contacts with the Radboudumc started last year, when I contacted dr. Allard Hosman from the Orthopedic department, via my Italian professor, asking him for the chance to join the hospital for a research, in order to write my final thesis on spinal trauma. My experience in that occasion has been definitely positive. I started a new research project about the new classification by AOSpine for thoracolumbar fractures classification and the results are actually really good. I found in the Netherlands a great, hierarchy-free and well organized education system, that allowed me to learn so much in such a short amount of time. I was always supervised, but also free to choose what I want to do in my research. That was for me totally new and extremely challenging.

Once I came back to Italy, after some considerations my impressions became intentions: the chance of being trained in the Netherland is a tempting and alluring challenge for me. I am extremely passionate for the neurosurgery; I have been so since the third year of Medicine, for numerous reasons. It would be reductive to say that I like the anatomy, the physiology, the clinic of the brain; once I was in the operation room for the first time for neurosurgery I clearly realized that I wouldn’t do anything else. And it’s my opinion that the Netherlands can give to my passion great chance of development and achievement that I wouldn’t have in Italy.
So, that’s what lead me here. I contacted dr. Bartels and asked him for the chance to join the department of Neurosurgery. I am well aware that it’s going to be a long uphill way, but I am really determinate to do it.

I graduated last July (cum laude) and I will spent whole september and october in the department, because I want to get as better as possible into a system I was not educated for, and learn a language that it is still quite difficult for me.
After these two months I have to go back to Italy for a three-months mandatory internship that will finish in February 2015 with a final exam that will also give me the medical license. After that, the plan would be to join again the department in the role I can achieve. The best would be to get an ANIOS place and that’s why I will really do my best to get there, both during the upcoming weeks and later.

I am really grateful for the chance to join the department and for the great kindness everybody is showing me”.