Dear colleagues,

I have the great pleasure to address you for the first time in writing as my colleagues and to communicate officially with you as the Dean of what is now also your Third Faculty of Medicine of Charles University in Prague.

You chose helping the ill and the suffering as your future vocation and successfully passed the demanding process of entrance exams, thereby becoming new members of our academic community and gaining all the rights bestowed upon students of the University, as well as all the responsibilities. Our faculty is a relatively small one; students and teachers know each other well and we all strive to help students them with the difficult role they have taken on.

This is also why you have received this Vademecum. Its purpose, as its name suggests, is to prepare you for your first steps at the faculty so as to make you feel that our academic community is truly asking you: Vade mecum – Come with Me. I will be most pleased if your future studies at this faculty become our shared journey, if your intentions and efforts to become a good and well educated doctor are fulfilled to the greatest possible extent and if your lecturers truly play their role as guides and teachers.

But studying at our faculty doesn't mean only attending lectures during the day and reading textbooks at night but also offers a number of other far more pleasant aspects, which make up what is referred to as the student life. We hope you will take part in them and help create what makes our community special.

I believe that the journey on which you're about to embark will be rewarded by your successful graduation and that we won't lose any of you along the way.

QBFFFS

Prof. Michal Anděl, MD., CSc. Dean of the Third Faculty of Medicine at Charles University