“It might sound like a cliché, but for me, it was a life-changing experience”, wrote Dr. Nina Vrsaljko, an internal medicine resident from Zagreb, Croatia, in a thank-you note to Dr. Trip Gulick, course director of the OMI’s infectious diseases seminar that took place in September. Dr. Hugh C. Hemmings received a similarly inspiring message from Dr. Hana Harazim, a pediatric anesthesiologist from Brno, Czech Republic, who attended the anesthesiology and intensive care seminar in July. In her letter, she described how her boss and mentor, Dr. Petr Stourac, himself an OMI alumnus, encourages his mentees to apply for the OMI programs and how much she personally benefited from her participation. Read through the thoughtful messages from our fellows here.
Email | September 17, 2024
Dear Professor Gulick,
At the beginning of September, as an Infectious Disease resident from Croatia, I participated in the OMI Seminar on Infectious Diseases in Salzburg.
It might sound like a cliché, but for me, it was a life-changing experience. It gave me a better and broader insight into the field and strengthened my love for infectious diseases. So far, I have attended many useful and interesting courses and seminars. However, OMI seminars are on another level – from the quality of the lectures and selfless sharing of knowledge to the approach and openness of the faculty towards younger colleagues.
I take this opportunity to thank you for the wonderful experience that gave me additional motivation for further training. Also, your lecture “ID images” is one of the best and most entertaining lectures I have ever attended. And of course, I have already recommended the OMI seminars to all my colleagues.
Sincerely, Nina Vrsaljko
Email | August 30, 2024
Dear Professor Hemmings,
I am writing you to express my deep gratitude for this year’s OMI seminar in Salzburg. This amazing experience really “made my summer” and kept me inspired and thinking about anesthesiology every day since then.
As I told you, I had high expectations, because many of my friends/colleagues told me how great it was in Salzburg. The reality far exceeded my expectations, such a large group of people who came from different backgrounds and during the week formed into a group of friends, exactly as you prophesied in your opening speech. We stayed in touch and shared tips on how to take better care of our patients.
Hearing your lectures on general anesthetics and their neurotoxicity, I am also full of new ideas for scientific studies that could be implemented. It reminds me of the year 2009 when I met my mentor Petr Štourač, who attended a seminar in that summer, and in the fall, we started organizing our first scientific study – on remifentanil in labour analgesia. Finally, I presented our results at ANESTHESIOLOGY in 2012. Since then, our journeys have developed together, and for me, it is a wonderful experience to see so closely what successes he achieved during that time not only in the field of anesthesiology but also in education and management, not to mention the fact that each of us has three children (who are friends together). After the OMI seminar in 2009, he completed the OMI observership at AKH in 2017, became the Head of the Department of Pediatric Anesthesiology (where I now work), Vice-Dean of the Medical Faculty of Masaryk University in Brno, Associate Professor, then Professor, built the largest simulation center in Europe from the ground up and we run the webpage on acute medicine for young physicians and medical students (https://www.akutne.cz/en/) together. He is very fond of you and OMI seminars and always encourages other colleagues to send their applications.
During the evening discussions on the terrace of Schloss Arenberg, we shared our personal experiences with anesthetic techniques, and the other participants listened with enthusiasm to my story about how I treated my own postdural puncture headache with the home application of sphenopalatine ganglion block (SPGB). I first heard about this method at ANESTHESIOLOGY 2012, and when I suffered from a severe headache after a lumbar puncture in 2021, I decided to try it on myself. Using only 1 ml of lidocaine and 2 cotton tips inserted through the nose into the nasopharynx, I achieved complete analgesia, which lasted 24 hours. When my friends Arthurs, Maria, and Brenda found out about my vast knowledge in this subject, including all the scientific articles (for example Jespersen et al. BJA 2020), they persuaded me to write a case study. I heard similar opinions this year at Euroanaesthesia, where I presented this case study as a poster: https://esaic.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ESAIC2024_Abstracts.pdf
Dear Professor, I hope that my message found its way to you despite the huge amount of emails you receive. I hope that our paths will cross again someday, and I am sure that it was not my last seminar in Salzburg. The work you are doing in the education and development of anesthesiology around the world is outstanding and admirable. I will be forever grateful to you for the opportunity to learn, meet, inspire, and grow together with the other participants in Salzburg. I wish you a wonderful end of the summer!
Yours sincerely, Hana Harazim