Gap Medics - Applying to Medical School? Work Experience with a Difference

THOUSANDS of students each year apply for med school. These are amongst some of the brightest young minds in the country – to even consider medical school you have to have to be dedicated to your studies and be a high achiever. The challenge facing them is finding relevant work experience and an ever-increasing amount of students are using Gap Medics medical placements overseas to achieve this.

In the UK, Over 24,000 students applied for medical or dentistry school in 2010 and of these there were some 15,000 students that were rejected from the process according to official UCAS statistics.

With almost every student applying having similar high grades it often comes down to the amount of volunteer or medical work experience a student has under their belt.

Med schools encourage medical work experience – it shows a desire to go into the profession and that a student has taken the time to learn what life is like as a medical professional. Problems arise when hospitals and GP surgeries are so oversubscribed with students looking to gain this experience that they are forced to turn students away thus meaning thousands of students desperate to get a taste of the profession and being unable to do so. Problems are also created by confidentiality issues surrounding doctors and patients – it’s hard to enforce this confidentiality pledge when a 16 year old, unqualified, potential med school applicant, is sitting in a GP’S office listening to every detail of often sensitive, personal information.

Gap Medics founded in 2009 takes the lead in providing medical work experience for students and combining it with a travel experience too. Operating in Tanzania, India and The Caribbean – they send students on overseas placements to learn from local doctors and shadow healthcare professionals – building up a student’s medical knowledge and letting them find out at the same time if a career as a doctor is for them.

Students all live together under the supervision of staff teams in secure Gap Medics houses and work in the hospitals Mon-Fri, leaving the weekends free to make the most of living in the heart of Africa’s safari country, among the temples and tiger reserves of India or on a palm-fringed beach in the Caribbean. There is also the opportunity for students to work in schools or orphanages in their free time also should they wish.

These often under resourced hospitals benefit too, with direct payments being paid to them for every student that is sent on placement. This ensures the hospitals are improving their finances, individual doctors in these countries are also boosting their income and potential medical students from the UK and indeed all over the world are expanding their understanding of medicine and using the experience to make them better healthcare professionals of the future.

on 09.06.11 by Mark Hinksman