My name is Florencia Corbalán and I have recently finished my medical degree at the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the National University of Rosario. I write this to share my story about my participation in the National Academic Olympiad of Medical Students (OANEM) and about the award and the experience that led me to it.

In 2016 and 2017 I participated in the OANEM that are held annually in the city of La Falda, Córdoba, with other students and friends of the FCM of the UNR, forming the Rosario delegation. I obtained the first prize in 2017, for which I chose to travel to the United States, to perform a rotation in “New Haven Hospital” in the Thoracic Surgery service, where I was 4 weeks in the months of September and October of the current year . Without this participation in the OANEM I encourage you to say that it was an almost null possibility for me to be able to make this trip and get this experience, for which I will always be grateful to the National University of Córdoba and to the people who organize these exchanges, because they made this trip possible, and everything went perfectly .

This rotation led me to live 4 weeks as a surgical resident, which meant entering the hospital daily at 5 in the morning, checking patients, doing academic activities with others students, residents and doctors, perform preoperative checkups and then enter the operating room many times attending complex surgeries, or simply observing, but always learning; then, he performed postoperative checkups and informed the residents.

Of course, this experience allows us to learn a lot about Medicine in a first world country, where the Medical Records are electronic, the hospital has 30 operating rooms (or more) acting simultaneously, where Admission to hospital pavilions is restricted even for staff, among other things. But this experience also allowed me to meet people from other countries (with the cultural wealth that this implies), given that in this hospital there are many international students. In addition, the hospital is located in front of Yale University, so contact with students from the same university is repeated. On the other hand, in my accommodation I shared spaces with people who were doing the same rotation as me, but in other specialties (pediatrics, anesthesiology, cardiology, emergency, etc.) and we were able to exchange experience and learning.

It is an opportunity worth living, which is difficult to describe in words because everything seems not to reach. That is why, always, I will always be grateful for this opportunity, and I hope that more students have the possibility to live it and enjoy it as I did.