I got a ‘yes’ email!
After writing to all of the following countries and their
hospitals (x)…..
Solomon Island (9)
Tonga (2)
Cook Islands (3)
Vanuatu (6)
Micronesia (4)
….I finally got a) a response and b) something that wasn’t “sorry,
we’re fully booked”!
Most places sadly didn’t get back to me when I wrote to ask
if I could visit their hospital to do my elective. One wonders how up-to-date
the contact email addresses are for these places and also how reliable their
internet access is – I’d been told to expect slow responses and the likelihood
to have to email several times to get a response. And then the ones that did respond were fully booked for the
popular summer elective season (this isn’t surprising if they’re the only few
who actually respond to people).
But, after 4 months of writing to hospitals and extending my
search to more and more countries in the Pacific, one little hospital wrote to
me with the following message within 24 hours (!) of me being in touch:
“Greetings to you from Kosrae, Island of the
Sleeping Lady. Hope you had enjoyed your holiday festivities with
families and friends.
I am pleased that you indicated your interest
to do your elective in Kosrae, Micronesia on the dates provided. Hence, I
hereby endorse your request if you do decide to come to Kosrae for your
elective. ………..please let me know how I can be of further assistance and I
will work with my staff to sort other details that you may need prior to
come to Kosrae………..thank you for your consideration to come to Kosrae,
Micronesia……..I look forward to see you.”
Woohoo! A yes email! January 11th 2015. It was
suddenly a good day.
I’d woken up, checked my emails in bed on my phone in
desperate hope of some sort of a reply (it was getting a bit tight to uni
deadlines for finding a place to do your elective) and seen, bleary eyed, that
they’d written back. It certainly needed reading a good few times during the
day just to check I’d not misinterpreted the message and I must admit, not much
Upper GI surgery (my placement at the time) went into my head that morning.
My mission for the rest of the week was to find out as much
as I could about a tiny island called Kosrae....
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI'm planning on doing my medical elective in Kosrae in Feb 2017 and stumbled across your blog.
I received a similar message to the above when I contacted them. But just wondering what you did from here to confirm everything - as unlike most other hospitals they seem to accept students on first contact without requiring formal documentation etc?
Also would you highly recommend this hospital/location for an elective?