Dear students,
the most unusual semester we could ever imagine has finished. Our lives were distorted with the emergency which brought a number of measures, limits and regulations which affected our functioning in ordinary life situations as well as functioning at our university, our faculty.
However, this weakening of the faculty’s activities was just illusive. As a matter of fact, the faculty management, in cooperation with heads of the departments, deputy heads responsible for education and training, academics and also administrative workers, relentlessly sought ways how to inform you regularly, how to manage the teaching (which, at our faculty, by definition, could not achieve full value with the distance learning), how to ensure you the least difficult way to finish the semester or to pass the final exams. A lot of things were new and all of them were happening quickly and followed the government measures which we had no chance to influence and predict.
I am fully aware that your situation was tough too. Except of the work duty for students of the 5th and 6th years, a lot of you voluntarily joined to help in hospitals and other health facilities and you were very committed at your work. I only can say thank you again for this.
Moreover, you also had your study requirements to fulfil. Although we tried, to the fullest extent possible, to adapt them to the existing conditions, there are still a lot of them left for you to finish. I know that fulfilling them in such conditions, with hard work at hospitals and with the strong constraints concerning the normal teaching mode is really tough. Now a lot of this is back to normal, the examination period is beginning and I believe you can deal with it very well. After all, you are medical students and medicine is not a static discipline, it is constantly evolving and moving forward, it brings a lot of surprises.
Thank you that even though the times were hard, you were able to represent our faculty well, you adapted to the inevitable changes and you brought us a constructive feedback. This strengthened my opinion that as a faculty, we are an organic, integral unit whose individual parts can cooperate and support each other.
I wish you good luck in the beginning examination period and I hope that you can upturn everything which happened this year into positive things and finally they will bring you, as future doctors, advantages.
Stay safe.
Yours Josef Zadražil,
Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry