Many medical students will be getting ready to go off on their medical electives this summer. Whilst some will be going off to exotic places there are others who choose to go to resource poor countries. At Dundee we have links with Malawi and some of our students go there for their electives. The key issue is how to best prepare medical students for what they will face in these resource poor countries. The conditions and resources will be different to what they have experienced in their undergraduate careers to date.
This summer one of our 3rd year students, Anthony – who has a keen interest in international health, is working on a summer project and aiming to develop an online resource which will help to prepare students for electives in resource poor countries. As part of his project Anthony is looking at what online resources are already available to help students prepare for electives as well as thinking about the different types of resources that could be developed and also how Web 2.0 tools could be used. Anthony is also interested in hearing what other students think would be useful types of resources to help them prepare. To facilitate this he’s set up a short survey on Poll Daddy and if you are a medic or medical student it would be great if you could take a few minutes to complete it. During the course of the project Anthony is also planning to blog and feedback some of the comments from his survey at Elective Research.
If you can pass on these links to students in your school or to colleagues who’ve worked in resource poor countries that would be great.
Flickr Photo Download: Scrubbing by Mike Blyth
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