The principal feature of medical education in Russia for both the Faculties of curative medicine and pediatrics is the introduction of a new approach to the training of internists and pediatricians that implies a two-year continuing primary specialization, one year while at the institution and the other year after graduation. The nature of medical education in russia and its curriculum at these Faculties is designed to cover all the general medical education within five years.

During the third, fourth, and fifth years, students perform clinical work as nurses, feldshers, and clinical assistants. In the sixth year, medical students take their primary specialization in one of the following clinical subjects: Faculty of Curative Medicine (surgery, obstetrics, and gynecology) of Faculty of Pediatrics (pediatrics, including child infectious diseases, and pediatric surgery, including orthopedics). Sub specialization in clinical areas is not an option during the undergraduate program, as profound knowledge of the main clinical subjects is believed to be fundamental for adequate training of doctors.

After 6 years of medical education in Russia, students pass a state examination according to the curriculum, obtain a Doctor’s Diploma, and complete a one year internship in medical units under the supervision of specialists. Instruction in ophthalmology, otolaryngology, dietology, climatotherapy, endocrinology, clinical biochemistry, physiotherapy, and such aspects of surgery as oncology and neurosurgery is provided by the appropriate departments.

The instructional methodology in Russian medical schools includes lectures by the leading specialists and regular practical classes throughout the course of studies.

Training programs at medical schools in Russia are adjusted to the needs of population in accordance with health priorities. Thus, when in the 1950s the non-communicable diseases became a real health problem; these subjects were strengthened and introduced more widely into curricula. When the role of primary health care became more evident in the 1970s, medical education in Russia became adapted to this target-problem.

In Russian medical schools following the annual examinations at the end of the fourth and fifth years, senior students of all Faculties usually spend the breaks between semesters in professional training. Students are taught to use their knowledge, develop their professional skills, master up-to-date methods of diagnostics and treatment, and become familiar with all other work they will do in the future. It should be emphasized that at least 25 percent of the time within the training program of all specialties is devoted to practice at the primary health care level.

Finally after completion of medical education in Russia, students must pass state examinations in general and special medical subjects (depending on the orientation of a particular Faculty) to receive a diploma as physician of general medicine at the Faculty of Curative Medicine (VRAC), as pediatrician at the Faculty of Pediatrics, as sanitary officer at the Faculty of Hygiene, as stomatologist at the Faculty of Stomatology, or as pharmacist at the pharmaceutical institution or faculty.

Modern Russian is a concentrated form of all linguistic traits found in the Russian nation: the standard language, local (territorial) dialects, urban speech and more academic nuances. Nowadays it is an official language of Russian Federation by the decree of President RF no 1488 (12 December 2006).

Russian is one of the richest and most developed languages in the world. As well as being the language of Russian nation it had great influence in creating and developing an intellectual spirit and values which resulted in world famous thinkers, artists and academics. Notable points Russian offers as a language are an unusual richness of vocabulary, plasticity of grammar forms as well as a variety of stylistic elements. Russian has one of the most complicated grammars, which can be taught for years and then still be not understood. It combines difficult understanding of future, present and past tenses, where the endings of the words change every time, complex punctuation and masculine/feminine gender of words.

The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters, which can be divided into three parts: vowel, consonants and mute letters (there are 10, 21 and 2 of them respectively). The interesting fact about mute letters is that there are no words in Russian language, which begin with these letters as they used just for sounds of the words. Also, Russian has some tricky words. Thus, one word can have different meanings in different contexts and if the person, who was not involved in conversation, accidently engaged with others, they can be lost in this conversation due to not knowing the topic.

Russia has a contest called ”Russian Bear”, which is similar to the IELTS and TOEFL and examines the understating of the Russian language. The level of technical know-how is extremely high testing even the most competent students of the Russian language.

States of CIS use Russian as one of the international languages. The CIS includes a number of states such as The Russian Federation, Azerbaijan Republic, Republic of Armenia, Republic of Belarus, Georgia, Republic Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Republic of Moldova, Republic of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Republic of Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Many of these people use Russian in social, political, scientific, technical and cultural spheres. Russian’s influence on native tongues has been positive especially in the aforementioned fields Vocabularies have been enhanced as well as offering access to valuable information, texts and manuals. According to the magazine ”Language Monthly”, approximately 300 million people speak Russian, which brings it to the 5th place in popularity, and of these160 million among these people believe that their mother tongue is Russian.

As far as dialects of Russian language are concerned, they emerged in European part of Russia in the 15th century. They consist of two major groups: North and South dialects. They are characterised by a precise isogloss. People with the North dialect have an accent on the letter ‘O’ and also can speak a little bit faster than people from South. As for the people with South dialect, they have an accent on the letter ‘A’. Thus, people from different parts of Russia, can sometimes barely understand some words during a conversation. Moreover, in modern Russian there emerged a ‘Moscow dialect’.

One of the best places in Moscow and in Russia where students may study Russian is Russian Language Centre of Moscow State University. The special atmosphere allowing studying Russian on the highest level costs here.

Moscow State University is Russia’s first and biggest classical university. It was opened in 1755. It was the first University where Russian language started to be used as the medium of instruction. A printing house and a bookstore were opened at the University, to lay the basis for national book and newspaper publishing. Throughout the 19th century the printing house boasted the highest production output in Russia.

Upon the request, during training in the Russian Language Centre you will be lodged in University Campus. But there is also attractive alternative, allowing to raise deeply the level of Russian language – accommodation in host russian family.

At the end of program you will receive the corresponding certificate and you can pass state testing and get TORFL Certificate. While training in Russian Language Centre you will have many opportunities to speak russian language. You will find new friends with whom you can have a rest and go to discos. Also you will follow many interesting excursions across Moscow and other well-known cities of Russia.

The advantage of studying medicine in Russia is the broad clinical exposure one receives. While their are many medical universities in Russia it is better to go to the ones in bigger cities because they are better funded and are known for research and development.

The admission process isn’t difficult. There are some requirements that need to be met and once accepted an admissions letter is typically issued. After that the student must submit the requested documents along with a fee for an invitation letter. With this letter you than can go to the Russian Embassy in your country and request a visa.

The living costs are relatively cheaper than in Europe. The most expensive thing in Russia is the cost of renting an apartment. To cut costs and stay within your budget its better to live in the student hostel where all foreign students live.

Traveling to the hospitals when doing clinical rotations is usually done in groups. Transportation is easily accessible and one can get a subsidized transportation card that makes traveling less costly. The way it works is you pay a flat fee every month and you get a card that allows you to travel an unlimited amount of times within that month.

To study medicine in Russia it is essential to able to adapt to the climate and culture. You should be willing to learn a bit of Russian which will come natural later, as time passes by you’ll notice how fast you start speaking Russian.

Some of the rules you need to know about the Russian language are: There are three genders masculine, feminine and neuter. There are no articles used with nouns. For example, you would not say the girl, but rather you would just say girl. Nouns are singular and plural. Adjectives must agree with the nouns in terms of the gender and whether the noun is singular or plural. Verbs conjugate according to the person, the tense and the mood. There are three tenses of verbs past, present and future. When pronouncing the Russian words, you do so phonetically so that you say each letter of the word. You do not have to worry about the sound of vowels because there are no short or long vowels in this language. The stress can fall on any part of the word and there are no dipthongs in this language, such as /th/or/sh/ as there are in English.

There is an easy way of differentiating between the genders, since you do not have a definite article to help you in Russian. Any nouns that end in and are always masculine. Words that end in and are feminine and words ending in and are neutral. You also have to keep in mind that there are exceptions to every rule, especially in the case of feminine nouns. However, when you learn the nouns and their gender as part of your course, you will also learn the nouns endings that are exceptions to these patterns. As part of your Russian grammar lessons, you will also learn which tense of verb to use in different situations. An example of a situation in which you would use this tense of the verb would be for speaking of a situation that started and ended at a specific time in the past, but the result is not important. If you are speaking about an event that occurred in the past and you are telling the result, you would use the perfective aspect of the past tense.

This type of grammatical lesson may take you more time than some of the others if you find it difficult to understand. You do have to give yourself lots of time when learning Russian. Grammar is a wide open battlefield and you’ll have to take it down sector by sector. Start out with genders and learn how to spot the gender of a Russian noun. This can be easily done by analyzing the ending consonant of the noun. You should look on the Internet for a list of noun endings for masculine, feminine and neutral and print it out.