I have had a great experience of participating in Erasmus+/Mobile+ mobility program in the University of  Porto, Portugal. I am so excited to share it with you. The official informationof the mobility program was available on the website of our University and I decided to try my fortune.

Having a little idea about the University of Porto, I decided to collect much more information about this University. The University of Porto occupies a leading position in the ranking of higher educational institutions in Portugal and it is still one of the top 100 universities in Europe. It is famous for its long history and active participation in the international programs, and thus currently remains popular among the student community.

In 2016, the University of Porto opened doors to the doctoral and master's students of our University in the framework of the bilateral cooperation.

I have studied at Porto for 5 months (one semester) on the master's program in medicine. The training was in Portuguese, but some exams could be passed in English. The learning process is quite intensive with regular monitoring of student progress, and therefore requires the utmost concentration of student. Payment of scholarship depends on the results shown on the exam. In my schedule were mostly clinical disciplines, such as “Nephrology”, “Gastroenterology”, “Infectious diseases”, “Rheumatology”, “Psychiatry” and “Morphological pathology in oncology.” However, the program of the master’s course and doctoral studies in “Public Health” specialty is implemented in English and includes mainly subjects of medical statistics, epidemiology and management. The studied subjects helped me to improve my professional skills as a clinician, teacher and researcher, because they included the processing and analysis of the research data.

This experience of learning in Porto allowed me to improve my English, acquire some basic knowledge of Portuguese language, familiarize with many interesting people and their culture and, of course, learn how to cope with stressful situations.

The experience gained will always be with me, but it would not have been possible without the support of our University administration. I want to express my gratitude to the Rector of KSMU Dosmagambetova R.S., the Vice-Rector Turmukhambetova A.A., to all employees of the Department of International Cooperation and Bologna Process, as well as to my Supervisor Laryushina E.M., the staff of the Department  of  Internal Diseases No. 2 and all friends for their support and faith in me.

I wish you all good luck!

Nazira Alibayeva

Master’s student