Electives In Ghana

On your placement in Ghana, you’ll see conditions like acute malaria, diabetic gangrene, and typhoid psychosis. You’ll see the difference in how local nurses deliver care in areas like A&E, general medicine, orthopaedics, and diabetes and hypertension clinics (of course, you can choose which departments you spend time in). The hospital also has a busy HIV clinic that you can spend time in. Female and male surgical wards are popular (female surgical doubles as a paediatric department), and you can even do some community outreach, depending on your field of interest.

On a medical elective in Ghana, you’ll see conditions like diabetic gangrene (and resulting amputations), acute malaria, and typhoid psychosis. Naturally, you’ll gain experience in familiar areas like A&E, general medicine, orthopaedics and surgery, but the approach to delivering care will differ massively from what you’re used to. The hospital’s HIV clinic draws around 300 patients each week — you can get heavily involved in this area should you choose. You can also get experience in the clinical laboratory that provides diagnoses, screened blood, and safe blood products. If you're looking for a medical placement in Africa, make sure you keep Ghana in mind.

In our partner hospital, you’ll gain an understanding of a woman’s entire journey through pregnancy, from prenatal care through labour and then on to postnatal care. You can even spend time in the OBG theatre, where you’ll see that caesarean sections are far more common than they are in the UK. Complications in pregnancy are far more common too, like eclampsia, lower and upper abdominal pains, molar pregnancies, and breech babies. Then there are things that don’t exist in the UK at all — malaria in pregnancy and mother-to-child transmission of HIV are very real risks in Ghana.

The physiotherapy department in the regional hospital we’re partnered with is busy. At its busiest, there can be up to 20 patients to one physio. The department functions primarily as an outpatient unit, and patients are mostly those who attend a few times each week. In terms of cases, you’ll see things you rarely see in the UK, like Bell’s and Erb’s palsy. You’ll also see paediatric cerebral palsy, strokes, and cases of post-op rehabilitation. The gym has limited equipment, so local staff will show you how they rehabilitatie patients with very little. Some equipment the gym does have includes parallel bars, a tilt table, infrared and ultraviolet machines, and exercise bikes.

On your paramedic science elective in Ghana, your focus is on assisting with emergency care.  You’ll see a lot: RTAs, cancerous growths, hernias, ectopias, hypo- and hyperglycemia, severe diarrhoea, convulsions, fractures… Social and cultural factors in Ghana affect how emergency care is delivered, and there’s much less of a sense of urgency in A&E than you’ll be used to. The hospital’s lack of resources means you’ll have to get creative with what little equipment you have access to.

A placement in our partner hospital here is about learning how a low-resource radiography department gets by with severely limited equipment. The department offers ultrasound, urethrograms, fistulograms, IVU, and the A&E department has ECG machines. The department bought two digital X-ray machines as late as 2015, but that is the extent of the technology. There is no MRI, no CT, and no radiotherapeutic machines whatsoever. You also have the chance to see pathologies that are rare or don’t exist in the UK.

On a pharmacy placement here, you can get experience in the antenatal dispensary, the main dispensary, the A&E dispensary, an HIV Clinic, and the diabetes and hypertension clinic. You can also spend some time out in a community pharmacy to get the full picture of how everything works in Ghana. If you’re interested in how drugs are made, you can visit the main laboratory and an herbal medicine clinic. You can shadow local staff on ward rounds too. You’ll learn about evaluating histories, strengthening treatment plans, and help counsel patients on possible side effects as you go.

Spending time alongside dentists in Ghana, you’ll get to grips with how they approach everything from preventive health checks to restorative dentistry. Services the department provides include orthodontics, oral surgeries, paediatric dentistry, maxillofacial surgeries and fixed and removable prostheses. You get to see a range of cases too, like periodontitis, gingivitis and pulpitis. But, the severity of these cases will be worse than you’re used to in the UK. You have the chance to do some community dentistry too, visiting schools to conduct extraoral and intraoral exams.