Sri Lanka Elective

Hi, I'm Chris - a 4th year medical student at the Univeristy of Glasgow. This summer as part of my medical degree I have to do a senior elective, a 4 week placement I can choose to do anywhere in the world. I decided that I wanted to experience medicine in a developing country to contrast that to how healthcare is provided in the NHS.

Therefore through PlanMyGap year I am spending 4 weeks in South West Sri Lanka in a general hospital, mainly doing general medicine with some opportunities to get involved in some specialties.

This experience will be hugely useful in many ways, I will get to interact with new cultures and patients, be exposed to a different set of health problems than we often face in the UK and have the importance of clinical history taking, examination and judgement enforced as in this resource-poor environment, further tests may be hard to access.

To afford to do this I'm using a number of sources; I'm applying for grants, taking extra shifts on at work, getting some money from parents and fundraising from friends and family.

I'll be doing a few things as fund raisers between now and then, I'll list these here:

• Abstinence for April - no chocolate or alcohol for the month of April
• 5km Race on 8th June

The attached video and phot are from students who have previously been out and done the project.