The Bristol-Hanover student exchange 2019 is the 45th exchange visit. A group of Bristol students are visiting Hanover from 14th to 21st June.
After a day of sightseeing in Hanover on Saturday including a Photo Safari challenge and a visit to the iconic town hall, Sunday saw an early start to catch a train to Hamburg. There we did a boat tour of the famous harbour on the River Elbe. After lunch from the food stalls by the water, we visited “Wunderland” – a display of model towns such as we’d never seen before.
Monday and Tuesday were spent in the Dental School, with special lectures in English and observation of advanced phantom head courses, adult dental clinics and maxillofacial surgery. Particularly noteworthy was the Grand Round Lecture, attended by all year 3, 4 and 5 students. Two patient cases were discussed where there were difficult pharmacological circumstances. The patients attended the lecture, sitting in a dental chair at the front of the lecture theatre with a camera and microphone. For each patient, a year 4 student took the medical history and a year 3 student undertook a facial and intra-oral examination. The lecture was jointly led by a maxillofacial surgeon and a pharmacologist who explained the cases and lessons to be learnt.
The students found many interesting differences between the two dental courses, as well as techniques and approaches, driven by the different health care systems in Germany and the UK.
