Elective Module Report
Gusti Rizky Teguh Ryanto, University of Indonesia

In the 4 weeks I enrolled in Cardiovascular Medicine Department elective module, there
were a lot of experiences and knowledge that I acquired, so much that everyday I thank God forthis amazing and valuable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I had. Not once did I regret thechoice I made to enroll in this module.
During this 4 week stay, I studied at the
cardiovascular medicine division, internal medicine
department. I was assigned to a 5th year medicalstudent

group

also

currently

enrollinginCardiovascular Medicine module by my supervisor,
Sasaki Naoto-sensei. With that group, I joined inmany lectures and practices, including heart sounds,
electrocardiography,

echocardiography,

cardiaccatheterization, ablation, scintigraphy, and many more lessons. Those lessons encourage us
students to not only listen to it, but also to try and search for any way possible for us to masterand understand the concept of what they teach, down to the basic mechanism that is easy enoughto understand for us students. For example, in echocardiography practice, we were not only
explained what echocardiography is and what is the use of it, but we also got the chance to try
the procedure and master it ourselves.
Beside those lessons, we also joined in the morning conference, held every thursday,where the Japanese student present one case each week and then the professors and doctors
would point out all the interesting or
unexplained things in their case and explain it
as easily as possible. The one presenting acase was not only the students, but also theresidents and sometimes even doctors. Afterthe conference, we would join in the ward
rounds, where every patient would get
examined and the therapy would be adjusted

accordingly. As students, we had the chance to listen to the heart sounds together with oursupervisor by using a sound-transmitting stethoscope, so we could hear exactly what oursupervisor hear.
I also did not forget about my assignment to write a scientific writing, so on the first day I
immediately told my supervisor, Sasaki-sensei, about that. Thanks to prior experience with mysenior, he quickly assigned me to work with Nakayama Kazuhiko-sensei of the Pulmonary
Hypertension group. Thankfully, we met acase that was very rare and under histutelage, I was able to make a case report outof it. We did not stop only discussing mycase report, but he also introduced me to allof his patients and teaches me all about thecases. The cases I met includes, but notlimited to, Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension,CTEPH, Myocardial Infarction, Heart Failure due to various etiologies, and so on. So, not only I
met patients at the rounds, but I also met and examine the patients outside of it, which gave me
more exposure to different cases of Cardiovascular disease.
I also had the chance to visit the basic research laboratory of Professor Emoto Noriaki.
Professor Emoto invited me to his lab at Kobe Pharmaceutical University. In there, I was given aquick lesson and observed the western blot technique. I also met a few of Indonesian students
that are working under Professor Emoto. This great opportunity gives me the desire to do morebasic researches and I hope this will cometrue one day.
Besides the academic schedules, meand my friends also participated in various
activities in Kobe. Those activities include
things Japanese language and cultural lesson
and extracurricular club activity, among
others. In the language lesson, we wereencouraged to try speaking the Japanese
language and in them also learn aboutJapanese culture, bit by bit. We also enrolled in thefaculty's futsal club for a month to mingle with andbefriend the Japanese students, also to keep our
body in optimal condition. Our student tutors werealso very friendly and helpful. They did not only
help us academically, but also in non-academic
things such as train tickets and places to eat. In theend, everybody became close with each other and
we all spent a lot of time enjoying life in Kobe together. In our free time, we also enjoyedsightseeing together to various neighboring cities, such as Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara.
I have met many people, friends, teachers, mentors, during my stay in Kobe. A lot oflessons were learned, a lot of experiences were had. Each of them very important to me andhelped me become a better person and doctor. I would like to thank Professor Kuno, helped by
Kato-san and Kimi-san, as our benefactor for this program, also to every teacher in
Cardiovascular Medicine, from Professor Hirata as the head of department, Professor Emoto,Sasaki-sensei, Nakayama-sensei, Mori-sensei to everybody in Cardiovascular Medicinedepartment. Thank you to Terao-sensei and Yun-sensei for the Japanese lessons. Also, thankyou to all the student tutors and friends in Kobe University that helped us and made our stay inKobe very memorable. I hope that my journey in Kobe would only be the beginning ofsomething much bigger in the future. Thank you for everything.