Last night there was a news report about two 23 year old law graduates travelling in Brazil who were arrested for fraud after claiming their possessions had been stolen. Apparentely the police found their story suspicious and accompanied them back to their hostel, only to find some of the possessions they were claiming for were actually in their cases.

It’s a lesson to all student travellers to be aware of the consequences of their actions and be extra careful when travelling overseas.

Whether these girls were unfortunate enough to have made a mistake about what of their posessions had gone missing – reports suggest they had had some things stolen earlier in the week - or, as the papers are suggesting,  they thought that Rio has such a high crime rate that it would be easy to claim to police they had been robbed, get a crime report and get their money / posessions back from their insurance, the girls are now facing up to the reality of the Rio justice system and the poor conditions of the women’s prison.

If they are found guilty, the girls would certainly not be the first travellers to try and make a bit of money from fake theft of belongings. Millions of people attempt insurance scams every year and according to the insurance fraud bureau, bogus and inflated insurance claims cost the UK insurance industry over £1.6 billion a year, adding 5% to every policyholder’s premium.  The bureau are doing everything they can to reduce these claims and although in this case it was the Rio police that were  keen to show the city is not a notorious crime spot, the insurance fraud bureau will come down hard on any attempts at fraud they discover.  

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Packing to go on a long trip is always tough – no matter how many times you repack it always seems to be the boring stuff you have to take that fills up 90% of your bag space. All the fun things that have no relevance to an overseas placement – nice clothes, keepsakes from home, giant tubs of marmite….where do they go? Should you buy a bigger bag? Take two bags? And what about all the medical supplies you want to take out to your hospital overseas? Are you allowed to take those?

Leaving, on a jet plane!

Airline baggage allowances can be found on your airlines website, but you are not alone if you find the breakdown confusing and / or vague! To help out, we contacted a few of the main airlines our students use to see what they had to say about luggage allowance and additional medical items and this was their breakdown for standard economy (or whatever title the airline has for economy these days!):

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Having visited Cambridge earlier in the year I was very pleased to be asked to visit Oxford for my first time, or so they say, the city of dreaming spires.

Last Thursday I attended the annual electives event organised for 6th year medical students at the John Radcliffe Hospital outside Oxford’s city centre. Such a large hospital! I made the mistake of parking 20 mins walk from the lecture theatre and had to do several trips in the car in order to get all of the company brochures to the stand!

We had been asked to attend to provide information about the company to those students interested in doing their electives overseas. With a 10 week elective period coming up in 2010, the 6th year Oxford medical students are in the process of getting their placements organised. The chance to experience a radically different approach in the provision of healthcare and to spend some time (if not all their time) overseas is inevitably appealing.

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An audible cheer rang through the Work the World offices yesterday as our new site finally went live.  Woohoo!

We wanted to give the whole site a bit of a facelift – brightening it up and making it a bit easier to navigate. We also really listened to the students that have used the site and provided us with feedback about what they felt worked (yay for interesting case studies) and what definitely did not (begone text heavy descriptions)!

I think the end result is great – it’s fresh and has loads more useful links and applications built in. Hopefully everyone else will agree too! Feel free to post comments and send us any suggestions  – we are still making changes to the site and who knows, yours could be incorporated!

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