Allie Banks’26, left, with her cohort at the Doctors in Italy program in Rome.

Last fall, in anatomy class, my professor Helen Werner was talking about this program shadowing doctors in Italy, and I was like, “Oh, this is interesting. Two things I would love: going out of the country and watching people do surgeries.” So that really sparked my interest.

I found out about it around late November or early December [2023]. I went online and did my research, because there are a few different programs in different cities in Italy. I chose Rome because it’s a beautiful city and they have a lot of PA programs. I set up an interview and it went really well and they asked for more information: grades, transcript, passport information, health forms, all that jazz. I made my first deposit in December for May 2024, so that was a pretty quick turnaround. I decided on it and booked my flight in March. You have to pay for airfare and the program, but everything else is paid for.

In May, two days after I came home from college, I was on the flight. They pick you up from the airport and get you to the hotel. It was beautiful. There were three other girls there with me, and for the next two weeks, we woke up every day around 7 a.m. and had coffee and breakfast, which were paid for, and then went on a train ride and bus ride with our supervisors to the hospital, which in total took about an hour.

Allie's view of Trevi Fountain in Rome.

When we got there, we would put on our uniforms, which were just like scrubs. We had our lanyards and had different assignments, whether it was all in one group or split up into a few different groups. They had us watch so many surgeries; it was amazing. We got pretty close, too — it wasn’t just through glass. We’d stand with the doctors. Most of us were in graduate or undergraduate school and had a license for CNA or EMT, so although we weren’t certified in Italy and weren’t able to help, we got to get really close and the [Italian doctors] would talk us through the surgeries. The language barrier was not bad. I was worried about that. Of course, there are going to be some smaller restaurants where you speak a little Italian, but [Rome] is a touristy place, so they speak a lot of English. The doctors too — they got their certification through an English-speaking medical school.

We watched a lot of orthopedic surgeries, hysterectomies, open heart surgery, reconstruction, and also some smaller surgeries, like removing tumors, Lasik eye surgery, and putting ports in veins. So we got the whole scope of everything there. I was already interested in surgery, but it made me even more in love with the idea of helping others in a surgical sense or a repairing sort of way. It was amazing. It made me more interested in orthopedics, but it also kept me interested in plastic surgery. When I watched it, I was like, “Yep, I’d love to do that.” We didn’t get to see what happens in recovery, but even seeing the results immediately was awesome.

Allie and her cohort enjoyed participating in an Italian cooking class.

Usually that would take from 8 or 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., then we would do whatever else we needed to do. They would also take us on trips on Fridays. We saw the Colosseum, Trevi Fountain — a lot of classic Italian places. We also took a cooking class with our cohort. It was the best time of my life. It was a good two weeks; we got to see most of what we wanted to see of Italy, but I would totally spend more time there!

The classes I’m taking now are precalc, physics, psychology, and an English class, and I’m also TAing for Anatomy and Physiology. I’m also an RA. After Beloit, I’d like to go to PA school and become a physician’s assistant and hopefully work in a clinic where there’s dermatology and plastic surgery. I’m going to apply in the Midwest, to stay closer to my family in Chicago. In the future though, if I can transfer my credits to Europe, I might consider it!