Comparing the differences

Times Reporter

 

Dr. Fanning recently acquired two students on a practicum to help him at the clinic and the office. On August 31 two young women from Germany arrived in Canada, and plan to spend a month here learning more about how medicine works here. 

Julia Maubach and Michaela Baumgartner have been friends for 14 years, and neither one ever expected to study medicine, much less come to Canada for it. 

Baumgartner never had an interest in medicine until one year in high school, during a sports class she learned about medicine. That was the end of it for her. 

“My dad actually is a general practitioner and I always said, I don’t want to do that. But when I came to the last grade of high school, that changed because of that sports class,” said Baumgartner. 

Maubach comes from a family of doctors and she swore she would never travel down that path. 

“I always said I’m not going to do medicine no way, and then in year 11, I thought oh maybe I should think about it again,” said Maubach. 

Her father is an oncologist and hematologist and she is considering going into that area of medicine, though she is still unsure at this point. Though one thing she is sure of is she does not want to be a surgeon.  Both women have been to Canada in the past, and for Baumgartner it’s a yearly trip. In 2002 Maubach was in Calgary taking a class to improve her English and Baumgartner was here visiting her grandfather. 

“They were here, and they came from Drumheller to Calgary and picked me up and I spent a day at the farm with them. Afterwards we always said when we finish school we’re going to Canada again, do a trip together,” said Maubach. Five years after finishing school they still hadn’t made it back.

“We both ended up in Med school so we said when we go to Canada, we can do something here,” said Maubach. The women do not go to the same medical schools, Maubach is north in Luebeck and Baumgartner goes to school in the south in Munich. 

 “In Germany we’re supposed to do all in all four months of practicum. And we also can do that in other countries, like Canada for example.