Student blogs

Hi again! In the previous blog, I shared you my story about how I found my thesis project. However, the experience of finding a degree project in other master’s programmes at KI might differ from what I had in Master’s Programme in Nutrition Science.

Luckily, I had an opportunity to talk with other medical doctors from Indonesia, who are currently studying their last semester at KI. They are:

• Gusti Adintya Putri (Adin) – Master’s Programme in Bioentrepreneurship
• Winner Ng (Winner) – Joint Master’s Programme in Health Informatics
• Noor Afif Mahmudah (Afi) – Master’s Programme in Health Economics, Policy, and Management.

I asked them to share about the degree project in their master’s programmes. So here’s what they said.

How does the degree project in your master’s programmes look like?

Afi: The thesis degree project in Health Economics, Policy & Management Program aims to further elaborate the knowledge and skills that we got in the first three semesters. Students usually choose one topic. It can be either health economics, health policy or health management area. The students are partly joining the existing projects in an institution, for example TLV, research groups in Karolinska Institutet, etc and partly create their own thesis project.

Adin: For the Bioentrepreneurship program, looking for a degree project is to look for a company to collaborate with. Even before the degree project started, we’ve gone for 12-week internship during the fall semester. Therefore, the company hunting started even before last summer. And the process was quite challenging.

Winner: The students in health informatics programme were generously provided with an ample amount of thesis project ideas each year, including projects from KI, Stockholm University, also some hospitals and companies in Stockholm. Besides, we also had opportunity to look beyond those ideas. The latter was what I did. Not because I’m not grateful, but the idea of doing a degree project in the topic that I liked most, drove me to another path.

Can you share your experience in finding your degree project?

Afi: I arranged my own thesis degree project. The last summer I went to my previous university and workplace in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. I met with my colleagues and professor and had discussions about my master thesis degree project. I told them that I want to conduct a study about multimorbidity using data from Indonesia. Fortunately, at that time the BPJS Kesehatan- National Social Health Insurance in Indonesia, just invited all researchers to analyse their data. Thus, I decided to use the BPJS sample data for my thesis and collaborate with a professor in my previous university as a co-supervisor.

Currently, I have been writing the proposal for the thesis project while continuously discussing with my supervisor from KI and co-supervisor from Indonesia. I also started to handle the paperwork and administration to access the data and ethical permit. Hopefully, the thesis could go well, benefit to knowledge and the society, also relevant to policy makers and stakeholders, especially in Indonesia.

Adin: I decided to do my internship and degree project in in Stockholm. Thankfully, most life science companies in Stockholm are very open to welcome students on board. I’ve been to several interviews before deciding one that I think suit me best: a health tech company, Brighter.

Couple of weeks after my internship started there, it was time to look for a degree project. So I asked my collagues if there’s any possibility stay and do my degree project at the company. We discussed about what are the responsibilities of the company contact would be as well as how my project would add value to the company vision. It is important to clarify the expectations of each parties. Therefore, I arranged a video confrence between my KI supervisor, the company contact, and I in order to ensure everything is clear. Now I am looking forward to start my degree project, which I believe will be an exciting experience.

Winner: I have always been interested with the topic of patient safety, the field which I had worked in before I do my study at KI.  Then I pondered: patient safety and health informatics, how do these two topics meet? The patient safety information system! I was fortunate to find a research group that has been doing the research within this topic at KI. So, I contacted the research group leader suggesting my interest of doing the thesis project under her group. I also included one or two ideas that I thought might be feasible for the thesis project.

I received a positive response from her. We arranged for a meeting, where we exchanged several thesis ideas, and mixed with a short “interview session”. In the end, we agreed on an idea of developing the patient safety information system for KI University Hospital. I submitted the topic to the course leader and got an approval. Then, we continued to prepare the thesis project further. My supervisor introduced me to several PhD students on her group that I can also ask and discuss with. Also, she suggested me to read several literatures that should be included as the key references. And, here am I now, highly energized for starting the project!

I hope you find their stories inspiring!

Have any comment, question, or suggestion? Contact me at email (resthie.putri@stud.ki.se) or LinkedIn (Resthie Rachmanta Putri).