our son is in a gap year getting hours for Physician Assistant school.
He came upon gapmedics.com that get you to foreign countries to work in a hospital for a couple weeks. Anyone know oif this operation? It looks like a for profit operation, if that matters. Pay the couple / few thousand and you go for the length of time you pay for.
Fortunately, the money isn’t the issue for us. But I do want him to get value for that money. Not just an expensive spring break. He’s looking to go to Tanzania if that matters (are some countries in this program more / less structured?).
Are there other programs that get kids overseas in a medical environment?
THANKS!
Before sending your son overseas for a “volunteer tourism” program, make sure that any hours he spends working in an overseas clinic will count for CASPA.
They likely won’t since the experience will be in a foreign healthcare environment.
BTW, I don’t know about PA school, but voluntourism is not held in high regard by med school adcomms for 3 reasons. 1) it’s mostly tourism with some volunteering thrown in, and usually a sign that the student comes from a privileged background; 2) foreign volunteers often displace local workers or devalue their compensation; 3) volunteers often engage in medical activities which are beyond their scope of practice–which is highly unethical behavior.
D1 was a volunteer EMT in Cape Town, SA, for 5 weeks. Her program was through Child Family Health International, a non-profit NGO. Note: D1 was state licensed and nationally registered EMT at the time.
Might I recommend a different place than Tanzania? It’s a place with shockingly poor healthcare conditions (the WHO ranks the country 37th in the world). It’s still reeling from the loss of a civil war, a quarter of the young people are living in poverty and they have high rates of cancer and heart disease: Knoxville, Tennessee.
Daily show quotes aside (http://www.cc.com/video-clips/cbbn22/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-third-world-health-care—knoxville–tennessee-edition), even with the ACA, there are still areas in the US that are greatly underserved. Would be better to volunteer in a rural area, a native american reservation, or an inner city.