For us doctors it does not always seem to be true, but we have long reached the digital ages. Even though there are emerging technical developments in telemedicine, diagnostics and robots for distant operations, one can not always find this revolution in daily hospital life.

When I was working on the neurology ward, our room was slowly drowning in paperwork. The cupboard above our tables was bending dangerously close to our heads due to the massive weight of all unwritten letters piling up. We were searching for files at least half an hour each day. My father tells a tale of massive amounts of paper records being found in an elevator shaft during renovations of the university hospital. And how many times we did wish, the illegally smoking patient with his oxygen tank did not choose the bathroom but our office, just accidentally setting everything on fire.

Anyway, that is inside our closed ward enclave. When you take a look outside the world turns differently now. My manager friend and entrepreneur is very proud of being completely paperless and gets angry at the retarded Berlin government to send him letters to his actual physical postbox.

And there are more advantages of the new digital world. You can talk to your far away holiday lover all the time. With video call he may even seem close. Or you could take a course online. Several open universities and also well established traditional once offer Master’s degrees or just courses online as distance learning.

During the spring school, I actually physically attended in Budapest, I met another young doctor, working for a large NGO in Turkey. Directly after attaining her med degree in Spain, she wrote an email to the founder of a hospital in a refugee camp at the turkish-syrian boarder. She left off to help the people fleeing from war and surely saw terrible things. During these years she noticed that psychosocial support for the health workers and helpers in these situation is not less important.

Now she does an office job for an NGO in Istanbul, while doing distance learning with a London based University in the evenings. I admire her for this, being so driven and motivated.

You surely have to come with a lot of discipline and motivation and it certainly isn’t for everyone. But it could be an option, if you have some time and want to get an international degree in a field to develop yourself. It usually costs money which might drive you to work more. You get more time than for a full time attending master’s. Some people might love following lectures whenever they want, wherever they want, watching movies and skype. Some people might miss direct contact more. But it is all possible now a days and you spare your cupboard for beautiful things when you hand in your assignments digitally.

Google “distance learning” and explore the possibilities. There are options for global health, immunology, psychosocial support in humanitarian aid, therapy and many more. I added some links to the Masters section.