Feedback from Dr. Frank J. Lexa, MD, MBA, FACR

I have just returned from one of the highlights of my medical career. Last week I served as a 2017 Outreach professor for the ASNR in L’viv, Ukraine. During my career, I have traveled to many countries to lecture and teach but rarely have I been more satisfied with the experience. Due to some scheduling issues that arose during planning in the USA, it became impossible for the American professors to travel together. Thus, I was the only one there that week in August but my hosts showed me remarkable hospitality. Drs. Yuri Ivani and Yuri Palamarchuck are tremendous hosts and program organizers.

Each day, at Saint Paraskeva- an outpatient facility in the city center, I gave formal lectures and showed cases to an audience of radiologists of all ages and from all over Ukraine. Since I was there solo, we had a chance to cover over 120 cases from my files. The lectures were recorded for the sake of those who couldn’t attend in person due to clinical duties or due to the political and military issues in the eastern portion of Ukraine. My slides were pre-translated in Ukrainian, so the word slides were in Cyrillic and ready to go. There was very good simultaneous translation of the talks and the question and answer sessions.

Both at St. Paraskeva and at NOVO medical center (a state of the art facility at the Children’s Hospital) I was also shown cases by attendings and trainees. These were a mix of tough “visiting professor” unknowns, classic examples of rare disease, as well as current challenging cases for a second opinion.

My hosts also went out of their way to make the trip fun as well. We took a couple of walking tours in the downtown area to go site seeing and also took a car tour of L’viv to get some great views and to visit the medical school, the university and the famous St. George’s church. I learned quite a bit about Ukrainian culture, history and of course food. We had wonderful dinners every night in great settings.

This was a great opportunity to make friends and to build bridges and I was proud to represent the ASNR. I will be returning in the future on my own.