My experience in a hospital as a medical student One day during my rotation in the nephrology department, a patient with abscesses was sent to my hospital. He was a sixty year old man with great pain, unrelieved. After surgical drainage by a surgeon, I helped clean his wounds every day, which was not easy due to disgusting smell and the large amount of abscesses. Several days later, the result of culture indicated the abscesses were caused by an opportunistic pathogen, Nocardiosis, which, actually, is not known to many doctors. There were limited data which could be found in Chinese, so I collected related information on Uptodate and other databases. I presented what I learnt to the attending, which helped form a correct diagnosis and treatment of the patient. Since it’s a rare case, I wrote a case report, which has been published recently.