Preparing for an International Health Elective - Exploring Global Health, Ethics and Safety FutureLearn

Overview

International health electives (IHEs) are highly variable, student-organised placements that offer important opportunities for student-directed learning about health and healthcare in unfamiliar contexts. They enable medical and healthcare students to take responsibility for their own learning and to explore areas of interest relevant to future careers.

This Preparing for an International Health Elective - Exploring Global Health, Ethics and Safety at  St George's, University of London by FutureLearn, developed as a collaboration between King’s College London and St George’s, University of London, is aimed at learners currently studying in medical or healthcare disciplines and considering taking an IHE.

Key facts:

• However, there is evidence to suggest that international health electives do not always deliver the learning outcomes anticipated and that pre-elective learning can help to ensure a valuable and productive experience. 

• On the course you will learn how you might avoid negative experiences and ensure that doing an IHE would be both valuable and productive, should you decide to undertake an elective yourself.

What will you achieve?

• Demonstrate awareness of professional guidance on digital professionalism and be able to apply this to communications on electives.

• Identify clinical procedures that it will be appropriate for you to undertake on your elective and those that are not.

• Identify ethical issues that you are likely to encounter on your electives and adopt a structured approach to developing a response.

• Recognise the importance of linguistic barriers on elective experiences and take steps to mitigate these.

• Discuss from the global perspective the determinants of health and disease and variations in healthcare delivery and medical practice.