Healthcare student training placements

Electives in the TIME of CORONAVIRUS

We are a leading provider of innovative offender healthcare electives.

Part of the team

Since 2015, elective students and other clinical volunteers were playing vital roles in our humanitarian offender healthcare teams in the Western Pacific. Working behind bars in challenging jails, our healthcare and training services worked together hand-in-glove.

COVID stopped play

Then, in Spring 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic brought all that cooperation to a sudden halt. And the last year has turned all of our services upside down.

New wayS to play

Yet the pandemic also brought new opportunities. Secure environments around the world have started to accept the fact that wifi-enabled devices may be used (with safeguards of course) safely within their walls, so enabling us to launch our telemedicine service.

THE Learning must go on

Regardless of the ongoing nature of this pandemic, high quality medical education must go on so that the next generation of COVID-19 fighters is well prepared. We are keener than ever to continue playing our part in moulding the healthcare humanitarians of tomorrow.

COVID-ERA ELECTIVES

And so, after a few months of revising just about everything we do, we are pleased to announce the launch of our COVID-safe electives…

COVID-SAFE SELECTION

Because you won’t be leaving your home country or touching our patients, we won’t be doing a lot of the things we used to, such as checking that you are vaccinated against tuberculosis and fit enough to work in the Tropics.

However, we will still be considering your psychological suitability. This is because interaction with the health & justice sector can be unsettling for certain people - for example, sometimes it unsettles victims of domestic or sexual violence. That said, our pre-selection questionnaire is simple & confidential, and we also have access to an online occupational health service if necessary.

COVID-SAFE ORIENTATION

Based from home, either before or right at the start of your elective block, you will do online orientation using our dedicated personnel training platform.

COVID-SAFE Teamwork

Based from home, you will join us for our daily team meetings, which take place in our Zoom e-office.

This office stays open all day, enabling you to work side by side with others in our coffee e-lounge if you wish. There are also dedicated private e-offices for our various activities and closed meetings.

COVID-SAFE Clinics

You will take part in our telemedicine clinics, providing holistic offender healthcare directly into Philippine jails and police stations. In addition, depending on if appropriate commissions come in during your time with us, other countries’ secure environments may be accessible.

You will be paired with a telemedicine clinician who will work with you in performing consultations. You will document the consultations in real-time, using our state-of-the-art electronic medical records system. You will liaise with our Filipino staff to ensure that your clinic patients go on to receive the outcomes agreed in their management plans. And when appropriate, you will also follow them up.

COVID-safe Supervision

You will meet weekly with your educational supervisor who will be one of our telemedicine clinicians. You will receive constructive feedback on your clinical performance and help in reflecting on the various issues raised by particular clinical encounters.

And we also take good care of your pastorally. You will debrief with your supervisor if you have found any of your patients’ circumstances particularly distressing. And if necessary, we can signpost you to a trained counsellor.

COVID-safe LEARNING

We have an active e-learning ethos. During your elective you will learn in a variety of ways:-

• attending weekly interactive webinars on subjects relevant to offender healthcare;

• digesting the e-learning material we produce for our in-house training and our external clients;

• joining in with the weekly teaching session for our Filipino staff;

• participating in with our monthly film club;

• piggy backing onto any e-learning we are delivering to external clients;

• attending our monthly chew-the-cud reflective learning session;

• reflecting on your learning using our learning e-log.

COVID-safe ACTIVITIES

You will work on several activities, potentially including but not necessarily limited to:-

• recording a brief awareness-raising YouTube video for our social media;

• writing and publishing a patient information leaflet (PIL);

• utilising any particular skills that you may have - for example, if you speak a particular language then we may ask you to voiceover a video or translate a PIL;

• performing a brief quality improvement project (QIP);

• updating one of our pre-COVID policies, optimising it for the COVID-era;

• writing up a case study & submitting it to a journal for publication;

• assisting our torture & ill-treatment book

  team in the publication of a chapter;

• writing a blog article for our website & social media;

• designing and delivering a training session to our Filipino team;

• assisting our researchers with data collection & analysis.

You will receive full credit for anything you have worked on. And your particular workload will be pre-agreed with you, after due consideration of your individual circumstances, abilities & interests, and the length of your elective.

COVID-safe Assessments

Just as we did not accept pre-COVID students who thought they could just hang out on a Philippine beach for six weeks, we will not take COVID-era students who expect to hang out on YouTube looking at videos of cute cats. Whilst we ensure that your elective period is a fun time, our policy is ‘No consistent participation, no sign-off!’

Different universities have different elective assessment procedures, and we adapt our sign-off process to fit your university’s requirements. However, we generally include the following in determining your sign-off grade:-

• a case-based discussion (CbD) with your educational supervisor and any peers;

• a review of your QIP.

COVID-ERA Quality

We pride ourselves in trying to do all of our activities thoroughly, safely and enjoyably - and this includes our electives programme:-

My [pre-COVID] elective was deeply challenging
and enjoyable in equal measure!
(Dr Sarah Fishwick)

Whilst doing electives virtually will no doubt be different, we are carrying forward the same ‘thorough, safe & fun’ policy that we used for pre-COVID electives.

COVID-era value

Unlike increasing numbers of electives providers, our fees are extremely reasonable and represent great value for money:-

• Orientation: £40

• Elective: £200 per five-day week, making £40/day

This means that your elective cost will be:-

• Three weeks: £640

• Four weeks: £840

• Five weeks: £1040

• Six weeks: £1240

Whilst this is not dirt cheap for a virtual elective, we are offering a high quality, staff-intensive learning experience with regular patient contact time, and we don’t make a penny in profit. Instead, all of your elective fee is spent on delivering and supporting the humanitarian service you’ll be part of. So both directly and indirectly, you’ll be supporting the provision of humanitarian offender healthcare to some of the world’s neediest detainees.

COVID-ERA ASSISTANCE

That said, please don’t let cost be a barrier. Though we are tight on funds ourselves, if you have a true heart for offender healthcare then we want you more than your money!

• We accept payment in instalments.

• We can help you to fundraise.

• We accept donations from benefactors to subsidise poorer students’ costs.

• We award partial bursaries to financially challenged students from any country; in exchange, we ask bursary recipients to do so many hours of volunteering in lieu of the waived percentage of our fees.

• And we cut (very occasionally to zero) our fees for the poorest students from low & middle income countries.

Voluntary tasks may include:-

• paper notes summarisation onto our EMR system

• uploading resources & policies onto our website

• medical records audits

• website maintenance

• specialist tasks matched to an individual’s skills (eg languages)

For example:-

• Jenny is a UK physician’s assistant student from a lower income family:-

  • She is granted a 25% bursary on her £840 four-week elective:-

    • she agrees to give service-in-lieu-of-payment for 25% (£210) of the cost:-

      • her service is valued @ £8.91/hour (national living wage)

      • she does 23.5 hours of notes summarising after her elective

    • she pays 75% (£630) of the cost over 18 months @ £35/month

• Pete is a Canadian nursing student from a high income family there:-

  • He undertakes a £630 three-week elective:-

    • he pays 100% of the cost in one instalment

    • he also donates £500 so that we can offer discounts to other students

• Ivan is an Albanian medical student from an average income family there:-

  • He is granted a 50% bursary towards his £1240 six-week elective:-

    • he agrees to give service-in-lieu-of-payment for 50% (£620) of the cost:-

      • his service is valued @ £8.91/hour (the UK’s national living wage)

      • he does 69.5 hours of Albanian translation before & after his elective

    • we sponsor him 40% (£496) of the cost, using some of Pete’s donation

    • once a doctor, he pays 10% (£124) of the cost over 12 months @ £10.33/month

• Olu is a Zimbabwean medical student from an average income family there:-

  • She receives a 50% bursary towards her £1240 six-week elective:-

    • she agrees to give service-in-lieu-of-payment for 50% (£620) of the cost:-

      • her service is valued @ £8.91/hour (the UK’s national living wage)

      • she does 69.5 hours of Shonu translation & local prison liaison work, before & after her elective

    • we help her to fundraise:-

      • 10% (£124) of the cost is donated by a UK church affiliated with her Zimbabwean church

      • a UK CMF member who is a retired UK prison doctor donates 30% (£372) of the cost

    • we write off the remaining 10% (£124) of the cost

So please do contact us in confidence if your heart for detainees is large but your wallet is on the smaller side.

COVID-ERA APPLICATION

If you’d like an informal chat before applying, get in touch and we’ll try to answer your questions. If though you’re ready to apply, click this button to see the person specification and then apply.

Other official student placements

Before the pandemic we welcomed occasional healthcare students wishing to be seconded to us in the Philippines for a particular placement other than electives - for example, community paediatrics and general practice.

Whilst we hope to return to offering these placements again in the future, at the moment applications are suspended until the course of the pandemic within the Philippines becomes clearer.

Healthcare graduate training placements

Clinical FellowsHIPS

Doctors usually undertake clinical fellowships between foundation & core training or between core & speciality training. We have a rolling recruitment programme for clinical fellows.

Out Of ProgramME Experiences

Out Of Programme Experiences (OOPEs) from speciality training programmes are becoming increasingly popular. We are more than willing to welcome OOPE doctors and - if permitted - other healthcare professionals.

Telemedicine OOPEs

Performable from home during the pandemic, OOPEs in our telemedicine offender healthcare service may be suitable for speciality trainees in:-

• cardiology

• clinical research

• dermatology

• endocrinology

• infectious diseases

• general practice

• genitourinary medicine &
  sexual health

• medical education

• obstetrics & gynaecology

• paediatrics especially community paediatrics

• child, forensic, general adult & learning difficulty psychiatry

• public health

• rehabilitation medicine

• respiratory medicine

• tropical medicine

  PhilippineS OOPEs

All of these specialities would be suitable for physical OOPEs in the Philippines, once the pandemic permits. Such OOPEs may also be suitable for speciality trainees in:-

• dentistry

• emergency medicine

• general surgery

• maxillo-facial surgery

• oral medicine

• orthopaedics

• otolaryngology

• others - please enquire