Medical Electives

In Kandy, you can undertake your medical placement in a government teaching hospital, or a more specialist paediatric institute. The teaching hospital is vast, housing eleven special units, seven ICUs and 23 theatres. The hospital serves an area with a population of around 2.5 million potential patients, so you can expect consistently high patient numbers. The specialised paediatric hospital has an exceptional national reputation. The hospital admits paediatric cases from newborn to 16-years old, so you can see everything from premature babies to complex paediatric surgeries. Read stories from those who’ve already travelled with us to Kandy.

On a medical elective in Ghana, you can undertake your placement in a district level hospital, a dedicated maternity clinic, or the best-equipped hospital in the city. Regarding the latter, don’t be under the impression that ‘best-equipped’ means ‘well-equipped’ — medicine in Ghana is completely different to what you’ll be used to. Resources are particularly limited here, making the placement perhaps more eye-opening than some of our other programmes. That said, you’ll see how local staff work creatively to overcome these significant barriers to providing adequate care. Medical electives in Africa don't get any better than this Read stories from those who’ve already travelled with us to Takoradi.

All aspects of our electives for medical students in Iloilo guarantee to be unique. You will undertake your placement in Panay Island’s largest government tertiary referral hospital, and a tertiary teaching hospital. The Philippines does have a national health insurance service, but its coverage is limited (even in government hospitals). To offer some perspective, local doctors have to deliver treatments and prescribe medicine based on patients’ financial solvency rather than their needs. Combine this with the fact that patients are predominantly from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and this profoundly impacts the provision of care. If you're interested in medical electives in Asia, you should add Iloilo to your shortlist. Read stories from those who’ve already travelled with us to Iloilo. 

On your medical elective in Tanzania, you can undertake your placement in a hospital well-known for maternity, an orthopaedics and traumatology institute, a well-reputed regional hospital, or the largest national referral hospital in Tanzania. Dar es Salaam is the largest city in the country, and with that comes a breadth of unique health issues. For example, economically disadvantaged areas are prone to communicable disease outbreaks, but like none you’ve seen before — cholera, cerebral malaria, and tuberculosis are very real issues. We offer several medical placements in Africa, and Dar es Salaam should be on your list. Read stories from those who’ve already travelled with us to Dar es Salaam.

In Hue, you will undertake your medical placement in a 600-bed university teaching hospital. Around half of the hospital’s patients are from Vietnam’s rural, economically disadvantaged areas. For many such patients, healthcare is free. However, going to hospital means a costly journey and sacrificing days of paid work while admitted. As a result, patients often delay the inevitable. This means extremely late presentations and severely advanced conditions. Needless to say, the medicine you’ll see practised here will be considerably different from what you’re used to.

As a medical student, elective opportunities in Lusaka have broad appeal. You can get experience in no less than four specialist hospitals. Situated on one campus, you will have access to the cancer and diseases hospital, the adult hospital, the paediatric medicine hospital, and the women and newborn hospital. Each area offers utterly unique experiences, but have low-resources, lack of staff, and high numbers of patients in common. The fallout of an HIV epidemic during the 1990s adds extra strain on the already stretched staff. If you’re looking for a medical elective in Africa, Lusaka might just be for you.

On our medical electives in Kathmandu, you can undertake your placement in a major teaching hospital, a specialist maternity and women’s hospital, or a specialist children’s hospital. With 22 departments, the teaching hospital has the greatest number of medicine specialties of any institution in the country. The children’s hospital is the only one of its kind in Nepal, so with 45% of the country’s population being under 15, you can expect a busy placement. Offering family planning and reproductive services to the city’s women, the women’s and maternity hospital is progressive, especially considering its cultural context. Read stories from those who’ve already been on a medical placement abroad to Kathmandu.