Education

Education

Medical Students Gain a World of Experience

Medical student participation in international health electives increases their understanding of cross-cultural communication, cost barriers for patients, and the need for patient education, according to study published by UW researchers in the March 2003 issue of Academic Medicine. The authors, Dr. Matthew Thompson, assistant professor of family medicine; Dr. Daniel Hunt, associate dean of academic affairs; and Dr. Linda Pinsky, associate professor of medicine, reported that more than 38 percent of U.S. and Canadian medical students graduating in 2000 had participated in international health electives.

The UW School of Medicine offers on-location international health opportunities to medical students during the summer between their first and second year of medical school , as well as international clerkships to fourth-year students.

The International Health Opportunities Program (IHOP) provides international and public health exposure with School of Medicine credit. In 2003, seven students were selected to participate in the program, coordinated by the International Health Group (IHG), an organization that promotes student participation in health-care projects with needy populations in developing nations.

"The charting system in the hospital is based on the old Veterans Administration system (before they went electronic). The charts and forms oftentimes are the same. The hospital staff is mixed local and foreign. Most of the healthcare providers, physicians and nurses are foreigners. The variety of backgrounds of the physicians will certainly be interesting to anyone with aspirations in international health."

--Excerpt from evaluation of UW medical student returning from the Marshall Islands

Each participant spent 10 to 12 weeks working abroad on projects organized with help from faculty advisors and other students in the program. Some of the themes were HIV transmission between mothers and infants in Nairobi, Kenya; diabetes epidemiology in Majuro, Marshall Islands; and work in Lima, Peru, on HPV and HIV transmission and on human T cell leukemia research. Through the program, the students completed the research requirement required for graduation, and displayed their projects at the medical student research poster presentation in fall 2003. In 2004, a site in Ghana will be added to the program.



	A beach in Ghana

After completing all their required clerkships, fourth-year medical students may apply for six- to eight-week International Health Electives. Three students were selected to participate in this elective in spring 2003: two in medicine and surgery clerkships, which included public health work, in the Marshall Islands, and a third student in an obstetrics and gynecology clerkship in Trinidad. In spring 2004 there will be sites for this elective in Ghana, Peru and rural Australia. Students and people in the country visited give the School of Medicine evaluations and feedback from each experience.

Development Note

This year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation generously supported UW Medicine’s efforts to improve world health. The foundation made a grant for a herpes treatment study to reduce HIV transmission in Africa, India, and South America. Another gift helped create the Puget Sound Partners for Global Health Fund at UW Medicine.