After graduating from university, Maria Velkova wants to be a doctor in Bulgaria, not abroad, aware of the negative aspects of both the system and the profession. “I want to become a doctor because I made this decision many years ago and I cannot imagine becoming anything else,” she told BNR. Maria is a student at the Medical University-Sofia and she is already a trainee doctor. Currently, state internships are canceled at least until the end of the state of emergency.
“We finished the semester maybe two to three weeks before the state of emergency began. We no longer hold university classes as planned in our state internship plan, because the nature of this specialty is such that state internships, at least for now, will not be able to be organized online”, she explained, and expressed her expectation:
“When the measures are loosened, we can start our internships under some modified scheme and I hope we can finish as early as possible, but there will certainly be some delay.”
In the last month, Maria Velkova has been taking care of critically ill patients and those patients who are after cardiac surgery at the Resuscitation of one of the hospitals in Sofia: “I have been working as a nurse for three years. Alongside this commitment, I decided that I wanted to specialize in Resuscitation. I had never imagined before that I would ever decide to become an anesthesiologist.”
She is ready to be a volunteer at the hospital and the existing risks do not frighten her.
The sound file from Mira Stefanova’s report in the program “Something More” – BNR
