2004 Trip
an ascitic x-rayIn most (probably all?) medical courses in the UK, there is an opportunity for students to spend some time working in a hospital abroad to gain additional clinical experience. During the 5 year course at Glasgow we have two electives, both of which are during the summer holidays... as a result the electives become a combination of hospital work and chilling out in some seriously exotic parts of the world.
I started to think about electives a year ago, and simply looked at a map of the world for inspiration. Nepal is a country that I've heard a lot about (especially its mountaineering) and I've always wanted to see it for real. It also offered an interesting medical experience, and after a few emails I had a place confirmed at Kanti Children's Hospital in Kathmandu. Two years ago I did an elective in Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, and just as GOSH is one of the major specialist referral centres for children in the UK, so is KCH for Nepal. But the countries are very different (not least in terms of resources available) and so I expected there to be a considerable contrast between the two experiences.
The Plan
BhaktapurSo on July 7th I flew to Kathmandu for a five week elective. During this time I tried to see as much paediatric medicine/surgery as possible, as well as lots of Nepal itself. The original plan was to spend four weeks at the hospital, then a final week travelling. However, it soon became clear that a better plan would be to take long weekends for travelling with the other students at Kanti, and spread my time in the hospital over five weeks.
During this time, I kept an online journal, which was particularly easy as there's loads of cheap internet access available in Kathmandu. It proved to be quite popular with friends, family and their friends, and there were also some surprises to find out who was reading it! I tried to report as many of my personal viewpoints and experiences as possible, and the result is a fairly long and in-depth diary. The whole thing is available here - I offer it on the offchance that someone is particularly keen to read it!
In my last week I also spent some time at a local orphanage called Hopeful Home. An afternoon visit turned into a week-long commitment to come and play, help with homework and general activities every afternoon, after my time at Kanti Hospital. It was one of the most humbling, life-changing and motivating experiences I've had. I still keep in touch and hope to raise some money for both Hopeful Home and Kanti Hospital for my return trip in 2005..
2004 Trip Pages
- Online Journal: Updated daily, this is the full story of my time in Nepal.
- 2004 Photos: Photos of the elective. I deliberated for a while on finding a suitable gallery, but in the end decided just to display loads of thumbnails and let you pick the interesting ones! There's over 200 photos, but the thumbnails should download fairly quickly.
- Official Report: This is my official report of the elective, made available to funding bodies and other folk.
- Hopeful Home: A bit about Hopeful Home for Orphans and Helpless Children, an inspirational place that gave me much food for thought while in Kathmandu. They also have an excellent website of their own at www.hopefulhome.org