Gabriella Tuvo, Medicine and Surgery

«I learned about the Pavia Colleges through the village pharmacist: no website at the time» ("Nuovità", n. 11)

Gabriella leaves her native Bonassola, from the Ligurian Coast, to study Medicine in Pavia: a choice she carries out with conviction, persuading those who were thinking of another path for her. At the Collegio Nuovo, where since 1988 she won a free place for the entire course of studies, she also stood out for her altruism, discretion and ability to mediate, so much so that her classmates renewed her mandate as Dean. Her all-round collaboration and her sensitivity for freshmen never fails, between onerous exams and returning to the family for the weekend. In those years, the Lion Club of Pavia decided to support students from the Pavia merit colleges: when it was the turn of the Collegio Nuovo, Gabriella was assigned their contribution. Between the fourth and fifth years, the time comes to choose the direction to take. The spark strikes while she prepares for the Orthopedics exam: Gabriella presents the request for a thesis on a particular type of hip prosthesis. While she competes for the specialization both in Pavia and in Milan, she remains as a student for a further year in the College, where she carries out tutoring activities, she collaborates in the management of theatrical activities and also in the medical assistance of the students.

After years in Pavia, she won a place at the School of Specialization in Orthopedics and Traumatology at the Gaetano Pini Hospital in Milan. He gives up on Pavia, where she had also won, and gets back into the game: «Leaving Pavia was quite difficult. Furthermore, when I arrived in the Orthopedics department in Milan, I felt like I was "playing away from home": with every change we always start from scratch, sometimes from level one, often from level minus two! In a new work environment nothing is taken for granted and every small step forward is the fruit of a battle. I fought for all the battles: to have the right to visit the sick, to make medical records, to go to the operating room, to collaborate in a surgical operation...". She was fired up with enthusiasm, after having attended a hand surgery course held by Prof. G. Brunelli in Brescia, she continued her training back in Liguria: she enrolled in a hand surgery course in Savona. She strikes a new spark. And thanks to the support of the director of the Milan Specialty School, Prof. L. Parrini, and a scholarship from the College, she also had her first experience beyond the Alps: destination France, Paris, to obtain the University Diploma in Microsurgery and the University Diploma in Hand Surgery. It is in Paris, again, that she was offered an annual position as Chef de Clinique, right in the Institute of Hand Surgery. Gabriella has found her path to professional specialization.

After years in Paris, Geneva and then London and Wrightington, once returned to Italy, after a short stay in Milan, Gabriella, with her two daughters, came back to the city of her College. As a specialist in Orthopedics at the City of Pavia Clinic - San Donato Hospital Group, in addition to carrying out diagnostic and therapeutic activities, she participates in research on bone metabolism and tissue and bone reconstruction interventions. A small, female team, under the supervision of Prof. Redento Mora who, in addition to collaborating with institutes all over the world (from Moscow to Riga, up to New York and Baltimore), works mainly on the four limbs... and on the hand, of course!

Help eacher other, always!: «In College I met extraordinary people: strong-willed, altruistic, stubborn and generous people. I understand that I have benefited from a free and at the same time protected environment, from a quiet "cell" and from the liveliness of community life; […] community life is not always easy… without all this, however, I would not be who I am today. In College I met some special friends: dispersed to the four corners of the earth, they remain fixed points in my life.» ("Nuovità", n. 11)