How does it feel to live in Finland as a German occupational physician?

For many years I and many of my friends in Germany had toyed with the idea to live abroad: To learn more about another culture and contact new people. What would that be like? At the end of 2003 my husband got an offer from his company to work in Finland. We didn't hesitate long and decided to take this chance. After initial enthusiasm it was more difficult than I thought to abandon our family, friends and also my work.

In Germany, I was active as an occupational physician in an employers' liability insurance association, which assures predominantly employees from the construction industry. All employers are bound by law to assure their employees. In case of an occupational injury or occupational disease (e.g. noise induced hearing loss), the insurance bears the treatment costs and if necessary they have to pay a partly lifelong pension. Therefore prevention stood in the center of our efforts as occupational physicians. I had a wide range of activity fields, for example preventive medical check-ups, building site inspections, and counseling on safety and training activities.

It was a matter of common knowledge, that medical doctors looking for a job in Scandinavia hardly had had any difficulties and frequently were more satisfied with their job than in Germany. Additionally it was known that occupational medicine in Finland is more strongly established than in my homeland. Therefore, I didn't have any worries about finding something for me too.

Now, my family has lived in Espoo since March 2004 and all of us feel very well here. After a time of familiarization, I had the wish to resume my professional life. But it was more difficult than I thought and one reason was my lacking Finnish-language knowledge.

I learned that Finns in applications use different approach than I had been used to. Contacts took place mainly by telephone or per e-mail and not personally. Sometimes I found that I had to be very stiff-necked to go on.

Since autumn of 2004, I have been working as a hand searcher for the Cochrane Occupational Health Field (COHF) at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki. My job is to search through German and English-language occupational medical journals for intervention effectiveness studies and code them according to established criteria. Together with my colleagues we categorize additional intervention studies from Pub med after the same criteria. The aim of this work is to create a database that can be freely used via internet. This is a completely new and challenging activity for me since my experience referred to more practical work with the patients until now. The advances of this job are that there are really flexible working hours and I can do some of the work at home too.

So, we enjoy our life in Finland, above all the beautiful nature. Sometimes it feels like a never ending holiday and we never had regretted our decision to go to Finland.