Someone call a doctor!

It may happen that you feel a bit lost when you are abroad and you need a doctor, even for the most basic reasons. In these times of pandemic – it’s no longer a secret to anyone – we’ve all experienced that extra touch of hypochondria, which certainly doesn’t help us to manage things in the most rational way, nor to calm the anxiety that comes from situations that are already delicate, such as an illness.

According to survey about the students’ needs that we administered at the beginning of our activity as Mentors at the University of Padua, it emerged that about 37% of international students do not have a general practitioner in Italy and 40% have never had a specialist medical examination since they have been in Padova.

So we felt it was useful, as a Mentorship team, to post a couple of infographics on our social channels Facebook and Instagram specifically about healthcare in Italy for non-EU students.

The first infographic was about the general practitioner: few, but practical information, starting from the definition of MMG (Medico di Medicina Generale) that corresponds to the Anglosaxon expression of GP (General Practitioner), that is the professional figure who can make drugs prescriptions, specialist referrals and medical certificates.

With the second infographic we went more into detail, explaining the procedure for booking a specialist visit, making it clear what services are on charge of the patient and what the conditions are for being eligible for exemption from the ticket.

As far as we could see, we received quite a good feedback from international students. Some of them also contacted us by email, asking for clarifications and insights on the content that we had touched in a schematic way in our infographics.