Venue d’Helsinki, Pihla a participé à l’organisation de la conférence ENPHE avant de partir en stage kiné dans deux établissements partenaires de l’École d’Assas.
I’m Pihla from Finland and I’m a third-year physiotherapy student from Metropolia University of applied sciences in Helsinki, and I spent the autumn 2018 in Ecole d’Assas, Paris, as an Erasmus+ exchange student. I wanted to come to France because I wanted to learn French and because Paris has always been one of my favorite cities.
I started my journey by volunteering at ENPHE conference with other Assas students. I got to meet other students and to participate in the conference which had many interesting topics. Everybody welcomed me warmly and it was great to have something to do during the first weekend. We helped with the organization of the conference: took care of the cloakroom, carried chairs and served champagne at the evening reception. All and all, I feel like this was the perfect way to start my autumn.
My first internship of six weeks was at Centre Cardiologique du Nord, which is a hospital that treats people with cardiovascular diseases. My typical day included attending a lecture with the patients, then some physical activity and afternoons I spent at the wards with one of the physios. We used mostly French, so in the beginning it felt really hard to understand everything, but with a lot of patience (and Google translator) I feel like I made a lot of process and at the end I even instructed couple of group exercises at the gym in French!
The second internship, also six weeks, was at a sports physiotherapy clinic called L’Ekipe. We worked with athletes and other physically active people who had musculoskeletal problems. I learned a lot about manual techniques and how to create rehabilitation programs for example patients who have had ACL surgery. Sports have always been close to my heart so internship at L’Ekipe was a great match for me.
I want to thank École d’Assas for the perfect organization of my exchange period. Everything went smoothly the whole time. I also had time to do a lot of tourist stuff and visit places like Disneyland, Louvre and Palace of Versailles. It was surely one of the best autumns I ever had!
