Out of love for her profession, her husband and Taiwan, a dentist from Poland repeated her residency to become a certified dentist in Taiwan, one of the few foreign residents, if not the only one, in the dental field.
A graduate of Poznan University of Medical Sciences’ dentistry program, Iga Kondziela put herself through the dental vocational program twice after deciding to settle in her husband’s native Taiwan.
Kondziela and her husband, Tsai Shih-wei (蔡詩偉), met at the Polish university’s dental program.
Photo: CNA
After dating for about a year and a half, they began their residencies in their respective countries, maintaining a long-distance relationship through the use of software such as Skype.
The couple said that they only saw each other twice during their residencies, with Kondziela flying to Taiwan to visit Tsai. Following the completion of their residencies, Tsai returned to Poland to propose to Kondziela.
After agreeing to start their life in Taiwan, the couple said that Kondziela, who did not want to be tied down at home, decided to take on the challenge of acquiring a license to practice dentistry in Taiwan.
According to the “Professional and Technical Examinations Regulations” set by the Ministry of Examinations, those with a degree in dentistry must take and pass the first part of the “Staged Senior Professional and Technical Examinations Regulations for Medical Doctors, Dentists, Chinese Medicine Practitioners and Pharmacists” before being allowed to enter a residency program domestically.
However, her first challenge was to become proficient enough in Chinese so that she could take the national examination.
The couple said that Kondziela enrolled at the Mandarin program at the Chinese Culture University for six months and committed herself to learning to read and write Chinese.
Although Kondziela failed the national exam on her first try, she passed it on her second try six months later.
Kondziela then started a residency at Shuang Ho Hospital in New Taipei City for a year before taking and passing the second part of the national exam to attain her Taiwanese license.
Having lived in Taiwan for nine years, Kondziela said she loves the hospitality of Taiwanese as well as Keelung, where she and her husband work together at the Hyatt Dental Clinic.
Comparing Taiwan’s national health insurance with that of Poland’s, Kondziela lauded the wide coverage that the local program offers, saying it provides better dental treatment.
Asked about the war in Ukraine, Kondziela said that many of her friends and family in Poland have extended their support to Ukrainians through donations and by providing refuge.
Kondziela added that she felt sad for Ukraine and hoped that the war would end soon as it was not a justified aggression.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching