Azhley Rodriguez
Staff Writer
Two Dominican graduate students on the pre-med track traveled to Italy to gain experience this past January.
Doctors in Italy provides English speaking people in Italy who need health care during their time in Italy, a platform to be connected to a local English-speaking doctor.
The post baccalaureate program at Dominican provided Julia Bensen and Amy Hocza, graduate students in the premedical program, the opportunity to travel abroad and shadow Italian doctors.
Hocza, who had never been outside of the country, thought this was an amazing opportunity she couldn’t pass up.
“I’ve never been to Europe before. Not only was I able to explore a new place, but I also got to shadow a doctor,” Hocza said.
Both Hocza and Bensen were presented the opportunity through an adviser who forwarded an email from Doctors in Italy to the students in the premedical program.
Hocza was intrigued and applied for a diversity scholarship to help support the costs of the trip. While she was there, she participated in the two-week winter program in Italy where she was able to see a total hip replacement on a 14-year-old boy.
“We got to see it from the very beginning where he was getting prepped for the surgery, the anesthesia, to the point where they cut the hip area out. It was really cool. I’ve never seen anything like that in the U.S.,” Hocza said.
She also shadowed cardiologists and dermatologists in her time at the clinic and fell in love with the food and sights while she was in Italy.
Bensen, who was skeptical at first, thought the program was a wonderful opportunity for her career.
“I was like, this does not sound legit, there’s no way we could go to Italy and shadow a doctor,” Bensen said. “So, I looked more into their program and the application was simple, I did an interview with the program director, and then I got an email saying I had been accepted. I opted for the three-week program, and I loved it. If I could go back right now, I would.”
She spent the first three weeks of the new year in Rome and shadowed different areas of the hospital.
“I spent time in radiology, oncology, orthopedics, surgery, and they just rotate you around. We also learned suturing and staples. We worked with a laparoscopic dummy to understand how to work with laparoscopic instruments and it was so cool,” Bensen said.
Both women are currently working toward applying for med school and earning their doctorate degrees and continuing their journey to become doctors.
