+44 01903 502595
Email Us
Get a brochure

MEDICAL WORK EXPERIENCE PLACEMENT

A Medical Work Experience placement is an excellent way to observe experts in your field and learn how they work in INDIA. The experience you gain will be an excellent entry on your CV or Résumé. It will also be invaluable to you in the future and totally different to what you're used to in your home country.

ABOUT THE PROJECT:
Our Medical Work Experience placements are based in Madurai In South India, where we work with two different types of hospitals. One is a general hospital which deals with surgical procedures and the day to day care of the sick. The other is a not for profit hospital, which aims to help abandoned children to survive, and then to re-house children with new families. 

Both hospitals are well run with excellent facilities, and work extensively with the local community. The staff are very friendly and helpful and everyone will make you feel extremely welcome to be there. You will be assigned to a doctor or nurse and they will help show and explain to you the workings of their job. 

Wherever you're placed, your work is likely to vary and may take you into all departments, such as surgery, burns unit, ICU, Physiotherapy, X-ray, and even the mortuary. However, if you're not qualified, you won't normally be allowed into operating theatres. The hospitals that we work with are very busy with so you will probably be worked very hard in most areas! 

Most of your work will be to help and assist the local doctors and nurses with their daily rounds, making medical notes and updating records. You will also be asked to help with computer entries, and help clean equipment and various areas within the hospital. The type of work you will be allocated will depend to an extent on your own abilities, but you will get a good general feel of the hospital and will usually have the opportunity to work in and/or observe most departments.

Working hours may vary depending again on what is available at the time of your placement. We will try to arrange work between 9 - 5, Monday to Friday, but you will need to be flexible as you may be asked to work evenings, nights and sometimes weekends.

Where you're placed for your Medical Work Experience will depend very much in what you need to get out of your placement and in your area of interest in medicine. Once we know what you want maximum exposure to, as well as the kind of experience you want to gain most, we'll arrange for you to be placed in a suitable institution.  This could be a hospital, clinic, or possibly even a medical practice. 

Other areas of medical work experience placements include Ophthalmology, Physiotherapy and others. Please contact us if you have a particular area that you would like to gain experience in that is not listed here and we will do our best to arrange an appropriate placement for you.

After detailed discussion with you to ascertain what you're looking for, we try to tailor our Work Experience placements to suit your specific requirements, to ensure you gain the maximum benefit and experience from the placement.

On this page:

• Accommodation

• Travel

• Prices

Return to the India Home Page and
the list of all our projects in India

Download and print additional
 information on this project
  ►in .pdf format
  ►in Word format

In South India you will most likely share a Travellers house with other volunteers and you may share a room with up to 3 other volunteers.  The house is very nice, with marbled tiled floors, a veranda at the front and back and a rooftop patio/garden. It has mod cons and facilities, including some en-suite bathrooms, showers and Western toilets. There is a communal lounge and dining room with TV.

Many of the families where our volunteers have stayed have taken them on trips to show them the sights - they truly 'adopt' you and they are wonderfully friendly and hospitable! They LOVE to meet and socialise with you, so you'll be a very popular guest!

Food: Your food will be prepared for you, but there may be occasional days when you'll need to prepare your own meals (on the cook's day off, for example). Food is a mixture of Western and local meals and includes fruit, fruit juice, etc.

"It's so nice that I've had the opportunity to really live in a place and feel that I know it and have a base. I've grown quite attached! You know, like the little routines, the corner shop where I buy my Sprite and fags, the Internet, the auto driver I get back from the pool everyday and I don't even need to tell him where to go or ask the price .... I think that is something very special and something I'm so pleased I did during my gap-year. I can be a poor tourist backpacker whenever I want to, but to live somewhere is quite different." Caroline Lever

To read about the extensive Support & Backup we provide in our countries, please click here.

Where possible, we arrange for two or more people to travel on the same flight and we will let you have the names and telephone numbers of other volunteers on your flight, so that you can chat to each other or even meet up before leaving for your placement.

Where possible, all flights we arrange for you have changeable return tickets because many of our volunteers choose to extend their stay once they are in their destination country. Changeable return tickets enable you to do so, within the limits of your visa and the level of your air ticket, of course.

You will fly into Madurai where you will be met by a representative from our India office. You'll be taken to your accommodation, and your school and introduced to everyone.

VISAS:. We'll send you all the necessary forms and information and make the process very easy for you.

We can also arrange your flight dates to give you additional time at the end of your project for travelling around and sightseeing - this is a fascinating and wondrous country!