Our community healthcare placements are designed for students to learn and gain a different perspective on medicine and healthcare, through a combination of hospital placement and health education.
YOUR PLACEMENT
A hospital placement will offer an insight into health practices in the developing world. You may witness rare tropical and infectious diseases only found in textbooks, whilst encountering patients with advanced pathologies due to late presentation. Through this experience, you will begin to appreciate the skills of the local healthcare professionals, and be confronted with different attitudes and practices, some you may find difficult to accept. By experiencing these environments firsthand with other international volunteers, students are encouraged to learn and become more aware of the global health community whilst nurturing their cultural sensitivity.
LONG TERM SUPPORT
In addition to your clinical placement, some of your time will be spent in the community conducting interactive health education in schools, orphanages or community centres. Not only is this a great way to give back to your host community, but the importance of health education and life-skills, particularly in children, is increasingly recognised as a major factor in improving quality of life. It also helps young people take greater responsibility for their own health.
Much like the placements you may have done in Australia and New Zealand, any hands-on work is at the discretion of your local supervisor and depends entirely on your level of study, enthusiasm and competency. Students must be prepared to observe and invest the time to build up a rapport to earn the trust before they can realistically get involved in any clinical work. With an added challenge of a language barrier, you need to go with managed expectations about what you will be capable of doing and how much you can achieve in a short amount of time.
If you decide to participate in our community healthcare placement you need to be studying a health-related discipline. Placements are available in the following fields:
- Medicine
- Nursing
- Physiotherapy
- Occupational therapy
- Health science
- Dentistry
- Speech therapy
- Biomedical science
If your healthcare degree is not mentioned, please contact us and we will find out the scope for a placement to complement your degree course.
Community healthcare placements are available in the following destinations:
Cambodia
Ghana
India
Nepal
Maldives
Vietnam
Find out more:
UniBreak dates & prices
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Community health blog posts
While these are opportunities for individual students joining a small group, we also design programs for faculty groups interested seeking a similar experience. More info