Electives In Sri Lanka

Our partner hospital in Kandy is huge, and you can get experience in a range of departments. The hospital has many specialist ICUs you can get experience in including: surgical, medical, cardiothoracics, the coronary care unit, psychiatry, OBG, and general medicine. When it comes to patients, you’ll see people present conditions that are either rare or non-existent in the UK. These could include tropical infectious diseases like dengue fever, chikungunya, and chagas, or things like tuberculosis and malnutrition.

In Kandy, you can get experience in departments including psychiatry, surgery, OBG, and general medicine among others. For cultural and religious reasons, the practices and attitudes towards medicine in Sri Lanka may differ from what you’ve learned. Our partner hospital is also known for its extraordinarily broad range of ICUs including surgical ICU, medical ICU, cardiothoracic ICU, coronary care unit, and cardiac ICU. Treatments are free at the point of care for patients in Sri Lanka, but a lack of resources is still a real challenge for local staff. Our medical electives in Sri Lanka offer you the experience of a lifetime.

Our partner hospital in Kandy is a tertiary referral hospital so it sees a lot of complicated pregnancies. To give you some idea of the numbers, c-sections make up around 40% of all births in the country. You can actually see what this looks like as a midwifery student in Sri Lanka by spending time in one of the theatres dedicated to OBG cases. You might also want to rotate through wards like antenatal, labour, and postnatal wards, and the premature baby unit. You have access to the hospital’s lactation management centre too.

The radiology department in our partner hospital in Kandy is one of the few in Sri Lanka that offer all types of radiographic diagnostic services under one roof. This means the department is often busy despite being open 24/7. To give you some idea, on any given day, local staff can perform up to 400 X-rays, 150 CT scans, and 10 MRIs. Undertake your placement here and you can choose to rotate through any (or all) of the following: X-ray rooms, the dental X-ray department, the CT room, the MRI unit, the DSA unit, and the mammography unit.

The dentistry department at our partner hospital is separated out into four units — the OPD, restorative dentistry, orthodontics and maxillofacial. The department offers a range of treatments like root canal treatment, wisdom tooth removal, restorations, pulpectomies, and infection management. You’ll see equipment like cavitrons, drilling machines, and sterilisers, and curing lights have recently been introduced. The maxillofacial unit provides routine oral surgeries, major oral surgeries like cleft lip and palate surgeries, and some emergency surgeries. If you spend any time in maxillofacial, you will probably see cases of oral cancer too.

Physiotherapy in Sri Lanka lets you experience a very different healthcare system. You'll do your placement in our partner hospital’s rheumatology department. You’ll technically be under the physiotherapy unit, but you can spend time in the neurosurgical ward, surgical ICU, and cardiothoracics too. There’s also an OPD where you can help rehabilitate patients using a variety of treatments. You’ll get plenty of experience with equipment and treatments here — short wave diathermy, exercise machines, interferential therapy, infrared lamps, mechanical traction units (back & neck), wax baths, and ultrasound therapy among them. Patients present a huge range of conditions including cerebral palsy, stroke, fractures, burns, MSK, and Guillain-Barre syndrome.

In Kandy, tropical communicable diseases are common. You may even see cases of diseases that you have never even heard of — chikungunya and Chagas disease to name two. You will be familiar with some diagnostic equipment here, but other machines may be outdated when compared with what you’re used to back at home. Due to cultural and religious factors, the approaches and attitudes towards clinical practice in Sri Lanka might differ from what you've been accustomed to. Our partner hospital is also known for its intensive care facilities including a coronary care unit, and surgical, medical, cardiothoracic,, and cardiac ICUs.