Highlights

On arrival, you will be met at the airport by one of our representatives and depending on time and airport of arrival, you will either proceed directly to one of our accommodation houses or you will need to stay overnight in a hotel and proceed to your new temporary home the following day.

We use the first day for basic orientation on your surroundings, where to do basic shopping, cultural orientation and meeting other program participants. Part of orientation is to meet your mentors. We assign you two mentors: a host mentor to help you with navigating your new environment and medical professional mentor to ensure you get a very productive and enriching medical experience. One of Elective Africa's key differentiators is that we have developed deep relationships not just with the healthcare institutions we place you in, but we also have deep and committed relationships with professionals that we will assign you to. This is a huge differentiator between our programs and other programs that send you to foreign lands, to unknown programs, under the care of unknown professionals. Our professional mentors are people who we know and we have evaluated and are comfortable with the quality of their mentorship based of feedback from past participants.

Please note that depending on the hospital you are assigned, your medical professional mentor will probably be a physician, but can also be another medical professional such as a nurse. In areas of dire medical services needs such as Africa, nurses and midwives often perform work undertaken in other places only by physicians such as consultations, prescriptions, operations, administering anesthesia and admitting patients. So, whether your mentor is a physician of a nurse, you will get great exposure shadowing them on the job. They will be excellent teachers and teachers and will make every effort to give you hands-on experience, under close supervision, whenever possible.

Once you have been introduced to your host mentor and medical professional mentor, the next step is introduction to the hospital, which will be responsible for adequately orienting students to their departments and identifying the patient care process within specific specialties. Particularly, this would involve reviewing the medical procedures, inpatient assessment and department procedures for providing patient care. In addition to your formerly assigned mentors, the hospital staff will serve as mentors for the students, outlining mechanisms for patient interaction, clinical evaluation and management protocols. The hospital may allow senior medical students the opportunity to assess and interact with patients and formulate their own clinical impressions based on these evaluations. It will also outline the resources that are available in evaluating patients and discuss how to appropriately access these resources in patient evaluation. Various laboratory and other diagnostic testing methods would also be discussed. The hospital staff continually assesses progress in the clinical acumen of the student and provides feedback to the students regarding clinical performance through their rotation.

Degree Level

Bachelors Degree (Undergraduate)

Qualifications

Interns must be pre-med or medical students. Volunteers must be medical professionals.

Intern Types

• Admin (Health Services)
• Health Sciences
• Medicine
• Nursing

Languages

• English

Cost in US$:

1,950 for 4 weeks in Kenya; 2,400 in Tanzania, Arusha

Cost Include Description:

- Organizing your trip and pre-departure support
- Organizing airport pick-up - at the cost of client
- Orientation
- Accommodation
- Food
- Support network
- Visa advisory

Credit Available

no

Volunteer Types

Age Range

This Program is open to

Worldwide Participant.

Typical Living Arrangements

• Apartment/Flat
• Group living
• Home-stays

Participants Travel to Kenya

Independently or in Groups

Application Process Involves

• Letters of Reference
• Transcript
• Resume
• Other
• Online Application plus Application Assessment

Post Services Include

• Alumni Network
• Re-Entry Debriefing at Home

Elective Africa's Mission Statement

Our mission is to provide and offer opportunities for both students and international volunteers to interact in development and educational programs thus enabling them to gain experience and build their capacities for their lives and that of future generations.

Year Founded

2000