Teaching Abroad & Projects Abroad

Medicine Abroad

"The medical programme was extremely beneficial and really gave me an insight into the Indian medical system. It has definitely reconfirmed my wish to become a doctor. I saw several operations that I wouldn't have seen until my fourth or fifth year at medical school, had I not taken a gap year."
- Olivia Wolff, Medical volunteer in India.

Our Medicine projects are an invaluable preparation for a career in medicine. You will experience the stark contrast between Western medical practice and the realities of medicine in developing countries. Sadly, you will also see medical conditions that have remained untreated and have developed to an advanced pathological stage uncommon in developed countries

The medical programme can be tailored for:

• Elective students
• Medical students with free holiday time
• Pre-university students.

Placements are also available for students taking, or planning to take, specialist medical courses such as biomedical science, nursing and physiotherapy. Each placement is tailored, where possible, to a volunteer's level of relevant experience and interests, and to a preferred size and type of hospital or clinic.

The key requirements in a medical volunteer are initiative, enthusiasm, and readiness to work in unfamiliar circumstances - a surgery with minimal equipment, an understaffed hospital, a clinic for leprosy or tuberculosis patients.

Pre-University

You will be involved in the day-to-day running of hospitals and clinics, observing or directly assisting doctors and nurses. You might find yourself, for example, watching a caesarean in the operating theatre, or working with a doctor on his rounds in a big city hospital. You can help out in simple but practical ways, vastly increasing your own knowledge and understanding of medical practice.

Medical Student / Elective Programmes

We offer a number of placements, which are particularly suited to medical students in their first to fourth years, and for electives. The placements are specifically tailored to use the skills and experience that you have already acquired, and they give you the option to specialise in anaesthesia, dermatology, E.N.T, haematology, microbiology, neurology, obstetrics, orthopaedics, paediatrics, pathology, physiotherapy, radiology or surgery.

Your placement will enable you to broaden your medical experience in the context of medicine in a developing country.

" Having undergraduate medical students working alongside me is a real help. I run the woman's clinic alone, and am often rushed off my feet - to have someone that I know can administer injections, take blood pressure, process urine samples and assist with births makes an enormous difference to both myself and the patients."
- Dr H Ibrahim

Other areas of Medicine:

• Traditional Medicine
• Nursing & Midwifery
• Physiotherapy
• Dentistry

Traditional Medicine

In India, China and Sri Lanka, there are unrivalled opportunities for those who are interested in the practice of traditional medicine. Many communities in developing countries rely mainly on treatments taken directly from medicinal plants, where facilities are sparse. In this day and age, some experience of cures and preventions that have been used for thousands of years, using locally available natural products, is valuable for those of us who live in the drug-dependent west. You can opt to combine traditional and western practices during your placement, thereby creating an all-round medical experience. We can also arrange for you to spend some time in an Acupuncture clinic in Mongolia.

Nursing & Midwifery

Our medicine programmes welcome anyone thinking of taking up nursing or midwifery or already training to be a nurse or a midwife. By working on this programme, you will make a real contribution in hospitals, clinics and in people's homes. Hospitals and clinics are often understaffed, and you can assist with duties such as bandaging, taking blood pressure, and generally caring for the patients. You will find that your new colleagues and the patients appreciate the fact that you have come a long way to offer practical help. If you're trained, training or considering training to be a Midwife, you could work in a maternity clinic in India.

Physiotherapy

Our rewarding physiotherapy programmes enable you to help disabled children and adults to lead as normal lives as possible. Rehabilitation is vitally important, and whether you have experience or not, working alongside physiotherapists in polio or leprosy clinics in India, a centre for disabled children in Nepal, physiotherapy departments of large hospitals in Ghana or a burns unit in Bolivia, you will learn a great deal about the practice of physiotherapy in a completely different cultural setting.

Volunteers with some experience can also work in hospitals in Sri Lanka or on a physiotherapy outreach programme in Ethiopia.

"The doctors and physios were excellent at teaching and testing our knowledge, and we were allowed to assist in examinations. I also really enjoyed going to the operating theatre."
Eleanor Pickford, Medical placement in Nepal

Dentistry

Living in a developing country, you will witness first hand the impact of poverty on dental health. Dentists are still trying to convey to children the basics of oral hygiene. In Ghana or India, you can work in a dental clinic alongside dentists and nurses - and play a part in both prevention and cure.

For the Medical Elective page please click here.

To read some stories from volunteers who have joined us on a Medicine Project click here.

Volunteers and doctors, China.

Helping with surgery, India.

Volunteers, Mexico.

Outside a clinic, Nepal.

Operating theatre, Mongolia.