Student blogs

Who am I?

Hej! I am Sakura, a nurse as well as a public health nurse, from Japan. I am a master student of Public Health Epidemiology and also a blogger at KI. I look forward to sharing my experience with you here!

What brings me to KI?

I was born in Tokyo and raised in a family which has 6 physicians and 3 nurses. Because of them, I had no doubt to pursue a medical related career in the future and ended up studying nursing as my bachelor. During my study I decided to have gap years in the United States and studied Computer Science and Health Informatics. It was a tough start at first because of the language barrier (my English skill was literally at zero level). However I found that mathematics and statistics are fun and related to health. After coming back to Japan I graduated and started my career as a registered nurse at a hematology ward. Afterwards I realized that I wanted to contribute to population health using statistics rather than individual health and KI offers an amazing Public Health program. 

I also applied to some of universities in Europe as back-up options but KI was always the first choice. I will never ever forget the night when the admission results were sent to me, it was the middle of my night shift because of the time difference between Sweden and Japan. The next morning, I told the head nurse that I quit the job and my journey to Sweden has officially started!

I cannot wait to explore more Public Health and Epidemiology! I hope this blog helps you to know more about Karolinska Institutet and life in Sweden.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions!