The message in an (electronic) bottle

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 11^th 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....

Beginnings

Welcome to the start of an exciting adventure.

As a medical student in the United Kingdom, I have the opportunity to undertake a period of study called ‘the medical elective’. From day one of medical school we all know it’s coming our way….one day…..sometime way in the future…...when we’re much older, much wiser, feeling like we’re only a small step away from becoming a doctor. And for me, the time has finally come. Am I wise? Old? Ready to become a doctor? Well…...I’m certainly older.

For students at the University of Liverpool, such as myself, the elective takes place in the summer vacation prior to our final year of study and is a requirement for completion of our medical degree.

Its purpose is to “encourage students to spend a period of further education outside the [North West] region, encourage study in a different cultural and environmental sphere and to broaden the student’s education”. So it leaves the door gapingly open to interpretation! And all the decisions really are up to you - the world is your oyster…..free reign to see any aspect of medicine anywhere on the globe….no limitations…..total freedom to carve your own experience. What an opportunity! But, how do you possibly begin to narrow down the choice?

For me, through the junior years of med school, I found a few criteria emerged:

• Abroad, if possible

I’ve never been much of a travel bug (no gap years, no inter-railing, the furthest east I’ve ever been is only Turkey!), but this seemed like a chance too good to give up to go to a foreign country, and preferably one that I didn’t know much about so I’d be adding breadth to my international awareness.

• Not Africa

Those who know me well know I tend to try to be unconventional with my ideas and, whilst Africa provides some fantastic experiences for medical students, it is the stereotypical destination for electives.  

•    Minimal language barrier

Expecting I would be travelling on my elective by myself, I felt it would be helpful to stick to countries where English is commonly spoken. Being away from home for a long time can be tough enough by yourself, but to be further isolated due to a language barrier might be one step too far.

• A low resourced hospital

I’ve spent a lot of medical school following people round and observing (which has taught me a lot of medicine, don’t get me wrong). But after nearly 4 years of med school, I want to do more. Going to a westernised/modern hospital, the likelihood is that it would be a similar set up to the UK – there’ll always be a more skilled staff member around to do the job whilst you watch (this is usually the safest way to practice medicine). By aiming for a more basic hospital, I hope to be a greatly needed extra pair of hands, a valuable addition to the medical team whereby I’ll get thrown into lots of situations where I’ll have to be resourceful, intuitive and (hopefully) very useful.

• Finally, if at all possible, somewhere a bit whacky, that people would think – “woah, how neat!”

With these criteria, and an interest in the Indo-Pacific waters following watching tv series The Pacific during my earlier uni days (the show portrays an insightful account of military life in the region during the Second World War), I settled on looking into the Pacific Islands and Polynesian areas.

That was 6 months ago.