Booking a doctor's appointment in the UK is easy. You can either go into the surgery with which you are registered and book an appointment the proper way or you can cheat by ringing up the morning you want to go in and claiming it's an emergency. No one has ever asked me during this process to prove I'm in need of urgent medical treatment, or even enquired as to what is actually wrong with me, so the system is perfectly designed for the lazy and impatient as well as the seriously ill. I had a sneaking suspicion that it would not be this easy in Italy, especially as a foreigner, and it turns out that I was correct.

The first issue that I encountered when trying to go to the doctor was that I had no idea how to go about it. Do you ring up and make an appointment? Do you just turn up, rather like a walk-in clinic? Not having registered with a medical practice, did I even stand a chance of seeing a doctor? I turned to my travel insurance policy to see if it had any useful information. Unsurprisingly, it did not. Universita di Pavia's website proved a little more helpful, fortunately. There were two types of doctor I could go to: the type that treated me for free if I presented my EHIC card and the type that made me pay a fee that I would then have to claim back on insurance. I decided to go with a free one as looking at the insurance claim form made me want to weep.

(As a side note, the University of Bristol Travel Insurance Policy makes for entertaining reading, especially when the other option is tidying your bedroom. I know how much my body is worth in real terms as I am covered for "death, loss of limbs or sight and permanent total disablement" and that my family will receive £7500 towards my funeral if I die out here - although I'm sure that this will barely cover the lavish and extravagant do my parents would doubtless want to put on to commemorate me. I was particularly intrigued by the £500 per day I would be entitled to in the event of "hijack", which I assume refers to some kind of kidnapping situation, as it only applies for a maximum of fifty days. After a month and a half of being held hostage, I'm on my own. Cheers, Bristol.)

Almost every surgery listed on the UNIPV website seemed to open for two hours every day, in the evening. I rang up several and no one picked up the phone. I have been known to display slight hypochondriac tendencies (I don't allow myself to read the booklets that come with medication anymore ever since I went on the pill and convinced myself I was having a stroke), so by this point I was slightly concerned that my throat was about to rot through and collapse in on itself. I also had plans to go to Venice that weekend and didn't particularly want them to be ruined by poorly organised health services. With the phone failing me as a means of contact, I decided to venture out of my room and walk to the nearest surgery. Surely they wouldn't turn an ill young woman away?

It turns out they would. I was told that to see the doctor I needed to register and to do that I needed to make a trip to the Azienda Sanitaria Locale, which acts as an administrative office for the local health service. I grouchily made the half-hour journey into the city centre, grumbling and coughing all the way like an embittered Typhoid Mary, and when I arrived produced my passport and EHIC card in the hope that this would be sufficient. It was - I was sent to look at a list of doctors who had spaces for new patients. I picked the one whose surgery was closest to my hall of residence. I am nothing if not practical.

Once I was registered, the whole process became relatively simple. I booked an appointment after registering, although it soon became apparent that this wasn't actually necessary and plenty of the people who turned up in the waiting room were being fitted expertly in between those of us who bothered to book. My British need for everyone to wait their turn takes a beating every day in this country; by the time I return in December I will no longer be able to queue or let people off the train before getting on myself. Italian waiting rooms makes British waiting rooms feel positively sterile, by the way. I'm pretty sure I need a few blood tests after spending time exposed to so much wheezing, sniffing and oozing.