Computer generated transcript

Warning!
The following transcript was generated automatically from the content and has not been checked or corrected manually.

Perfect your life. Hi, everyone. Um I'm Chantel, one of the members of med school extra. Thank you so much for joining our electives talk. Um by Phoebe this afternoon. It should be a quick half an hour talk and if you have any questions, just pop them in the chat throughout. Um and she'll answer those for you. So before I hand over to Phoebe who's 1/5 year medical student, accu university, um I just want to tell you a bit about med school extra. Um So this is an organization which tries to um give medical students and junior doctors resources to help them um further their career. So we have a website where you can see, subscribe and um have access to videos about finances, understanding, pay as a junior doctor electives and just um a lot of career advice as well. So you can check that out after, but I won't rant any longer. I'll hand over to Phoebe. Thank you. Hi, guys. I'm not sure how many of you there are. I'm not sure if we're sort of waiting for a few more, but I'm just gonna get started if that's okay. Um So this is a little bit about electives. Um, which is something I know that sort of as you get into fourth year normally, um, you need to stop banging on about and if your guys you knees or anything like mine, were they sort of lump it on you quite early on, like, and you think, uh, I don't need to think about that at the minute. Um, you think I'll just put it to one side and deal with it later? Um But it is probably a good idea to start thinking, which I did not do. Um So I've just got popped together a little presentation um of what I'm doing for my elective, how I went about organizing it. Um A few little tips and um sort of what I've heard other people are doing and then at the end, there's like a little opportunity to ask some questions. So just a little bit about me to start with. Um So I'm a final year student at Keele, born and bred Stokey. Um I did a undergraduate degree at Keele as well before I started medicine. Um in terms of my interests, I'm interested in pediatrics and neonatal. It's particularly um So there is sort of a little peed spin on my electives. Um Obviously, fifth year we've all just been allocated ordinaries going through Oriole. Um So I was, when I was planning my elective, I was trying to think about where I potentially needed to be in the country, um, around the end of fifth year. Um, and that sort of came into it a little bit as well. So, for my electives, um, I am doing two electives so we get eight weeks at key on and you can either do eight weeks of one elective or you can split it into two lots of four. Um, I decided to do two lots of four, um, for a few different reasons. Um I, I wanted to get a range of experiences. Um I knew that I didn't necessarily want to do eight weeks of the same thing. Um I knew I wanted to ideally travel a little bit. Um And I also knew that traveling for eight weeks would probably work out to be quite expensive. Um As with everything at the moment. Um It's just cost so much money. So I decided to do four weeks broad and four weeks. Okay. But I know some people who have decided to do all eight weeks in the UK, some people who decide to do all eight weeks abroad. So it varies. It's kind of what you want from it. So for my first four weeks, I'm going to the Philippines and I'm doing rel healthcare. Um So this is somewhere called Tacloban, which is about an hour and 30 minutes flight from Manila. Um I organize this direct through a organization. Um I'll come onto a little bit about how I found the organization later in the presentation, um, the placement itself has cost me 810 lbs or will do when I eventually have to pay the money. Um, remember when we had the chat with uni about electives and what their previous students had done and like when they sort of like gave us a little bit of a talk about it, I didn't realize how expensive they were. Um, and then once I started contacting hospitals and asking around a little bit, I thought, oh my gosh, like this is this is going to cost a good whack of money, but the one I've managed to get actually in the grand scheme of things I don't think is too bad. Um So yeah, it's cost me 810 lbs which includes my accommodation um and two meals a day. So the accommodation is with a family um in the local area, it's basically just in a room in their house and this family is going to cook two meals a day for me. Um From what I've heard, it's quite basic. Um the pre departure pack that they sent me literally last week. Um So it's like be prepared to have like cold bucket showers. So I'm not expecting luxury, but that's fine. It's only four weeks. I've paid 1100 lbs for my flights. Um but I'll be entirely honest with you, I left it till a few days ago to book these flights. I'm going with my friend. Um and she managed to get them a bit cheaper than, than I have. Um So, you know, if you've decided that you want to go abroad, I'd probably recommend booking your flights whilst they're cheap, whereas I left it late and, and have therefore had to pay an extra few 100 lbs. Um So, whilst I'm there, like I said, it's royal healthcare. So what I've gathered from the person at the organization who's been liaising with, um it's going to be essentially like general practice sort of vibes. Um So it's going to be in a clinic um where members of the local community can go, I'll be given vaccinations for Children. I'll be helping out in like welfare clinics. Um And that kind of thing, there is a hospital that I can go to and one day a week if I wanted to. Um or there has also been the opportunity to go with the midwives to go on home visits. And like I said, I'm sort of interesting pediatrics, neonatal and therefore that sort of translates over a little bit to obstetric six. So I'll probably do that rather than going into the hospital um our placement as such as eight or one every day. Um And then we have the option to go and do extra things in the afternoon, whether that's staying at the clinic that were assigned to, whether that's going and helping out on the nutrition projects so the area that I'm going to, it seems like it's quite deprived. Um, I know that there's been a lot of drive to, um educate the families about healthy balanced meals, keeping the Children at like a healthy weight, that kind of thing. Um, so they've got a whole project set up to, um, do with that, that we can help with or we can go and have leisure time. Um, like I said, I'm going with a friend so we're hoping that we're going to do a little bit of island hopping around the Philippines over the weekends. Um And the organization that I've organized this through, they've already sort of sorted out a weekend trip for us. Oh, sorry. My mom is calling me one second. Um ok. God, she was called the Most inconvenient Times. Um So, yeah, they've already planned a trip for us um for a weekend. So that should be good. Mhm. And then my second one, I'm going to live women's Hospital. Um So I'm going on the neonatal unit there. Um, from the information that they've sent me already. I don't think I'm gonna be allowed to do anything hands on. Um I think it's just going to be shadowing, going on the ward rounds. Um I might be able to help with some of the documentation and sort of the admin side, but I don't think I'm actually going to be allowed to do anything with the babies which isn't isn't the end of the world because it's still good exposure and it's still like, useful for my learning. Um, I've been told that I'll be able to go with the team to emergency and hire a C sections. I don't know if any of you have done a placement with Neo Neitz, but that's one of the things that you'll be on the ward and then suddenly beepers will be going off and you know that there's a baby being born in theaters that the neonatal team have been like, asked to go to, I've been told that I'm going to be having dedicated teaching time each week. I'm assuming this is going to be with either the medical students in Liverpool or whether it's going to be with the junior doctors. And like, I just put that at the bottom. I think it's going to be still a vibe to sort of when you're in 3rd, 3rd year ish early clinical years placements, which is where you go to the ward and you don't really know what's going on and you're not really allowed to do much. So you just talk to the families, you chat to the other doctors about what's going on. Um So I think that's kind of what it's going to be like, but I'm quite excited about this one because I've really enjoyed all the money in natal placements that I've done through med school. Um I've kind of signed up for extra neonatal placements, whether that's through the S S E S um or when I was on my pediatrics rotations, actually organized by the medical school. I made a point of going to the NICU quite often. Um So that should be good. So this is how I organized my elective. Um Everybody's had a different approach to it. Um Some people were like really on it, like my housemate, she had it sorted, she had all the paperwork sorted really early on way before I'd even started to look at what I wanted to do, contacted anybody that kind of thing. Um But the way I sort of mine out was because I got quite desperate and I ended up getting both of mine through Twitter. Um So I don't know if anybody's on Twitter, but there's a huge community on the of um doctors, medical students who all go under the hashtag med Twitter. And I just put a tweet being like, I'm looking for my electives. Can anybody recommend anything I'm interested in pediatrics? Also kind of want to travel. Can anybody put me in the direction of a good contact or anybody done something that they'd recommend? Um And I had so many responses to that tweet like I think I had like 100 people reply to that tweet with, come here, come here. I did this, I did that. So that's how I ended up getting both of them. Um So the Philippines one um someone messaged means she had done the same elective. That's where she'd gone. She was interested in pediatric. She, I think she's now a Pedes training actually in Cardiff. Um And this is where she did her elective. She gave me all of the contact details. She sent me a video that she'd put together of her time there. She told me a little bit about what she was doing while she was out there, how she found out how she found accommodation and that kind of thing. And then with the Liverpool one, um, someone had tagged somebody that worked older, hey, um and said, can anyone help Phoebe sort out an elective? Um So I reached out to that person and then did a few emails later and I've found myself on the neonatal unit, Liverpool Women's. Um I had prior to this emailed quite a few different hospitals both abroad. Um and in the UK and what I was finding was that either places were awful, um, or they had quite specific requirements for the type of student that they wanted or they were extremely expensive. For example, I contacted one hospital in the Caribbean they wanted, I think it was 2000 200 lbs just for the placement. Um which obviously then you've got your flights, you've got your, any vaccinations you need. Um You've got to pay for your accommodation, that kind of thing. Um What I also found was that a lot of hospitals just didn't reply. Um So I don't know how many emails I sent, but I probably only got about four or five back, which was quite disheartening, especially when you're kind of waiting for apply so that you can start organizing something. And so that's probably another reason why it's quite good to start early on. Um So yeah, um my top tips, like I say, start looking early places. Philip Fast. I know two girls in my year who are going to Great Ormond Street again, quite expensive, but they sort of that a long time ago. Um, they sorted it way before I'd even started looking really, um, also like your circumstances can change. Um So it's good to sort of have options if something forced through whether that's financially personally, that kind of thing. Um, speak to people that are in your year or people who've already graduated because you can get some ideas or you can collaborate with people. Um It's good to sort of chat to people find out what they did where they went, how they found it, what their experience was and think, you know, is that something that I want to do? Um, you know, some people are really keen to get hardcore clinical exposure. Um, and other people, they're not so bothered about the clinical exposure or the specifics of what their actual placement is. There were bothered about the location they want to go traveling, they want to experience a new culture um or you know, they want to stay close to home. You got to think about what is most important to you with your elective and what do you really want to get out of it? Um Have a C V and a cover letter saved and ready to send off every single place I contacted. That was what they wanted, like straight off the bat before they even said yes or no. These are the details. This is how much it's gonna cost. They were like we want a CV, we want to cover letter and they also want like a full occupational health summary with all of the vaccinations that you've had and that kind of thing. Um And on that note as well, when you're looking at locations, whether that's what I assume abroad um have a look at what the requirements are in terms of your vaccinations, what will you need to get before you go? Because obviously they cost money. Um It's an extra cost that you would need to budget for. Um I have some questions so not all hospitals ask for you to pay, but the majority do. Um I contacted in the UK Nottingham, Birmingham and somewhere else down south and they all wanted at least 800 lbs for four weeks. I think Nottingham might have been 700 lbs. Um But it depends where is that you're going, what you want to do and sort of what the prestige is, I assume, um, I haven't had to pay for my Liverpool want, but I don't know if that's because I've kind of gone a roundabout way. I, because I contact someone at older, hey, and then they put me in contact with the person at Liverpool Women's Hospital. I don't think that Liverpool Women's Hospital typically do electives as such. Um, so it depends basically, but I think most places do, um, most hospitals in England, if you go onto their website, they will probably have an elective page with an email address that you can contact them and they'll send you like an application form. Um That's at least what I found anyway. And how I did that was I essentially typed into Google, for example, Nottingham Nottingham Hospital, medical student elective and then it came up with all of the information. Um Yeah. So if you, if you have a contact, um if you have a friend of a friend or you know, somebody at a hospital um speak to them, they'll have obviously have to go through official channels. But if it's something that they can organize without it costing anything, then yeah, go for it. And I would recommend that obviously you don't want to pay if you don't have to, but it depends what you want and where you want to go and what you want to get out of it. Um For example, my housemate, she ended up going for the Caribbean one and then her second one she's doing in the UK, but she's doing it and I think she's doing it somewhere near London and I think she's paid 1000 lbs for that. Um, but she didn't have a contact at that hospital but she knew that that was what she wanted to do. I think it's to do. I think she's doing that air ambulance stuff. Um, and she knew that that's, that's an experience that she wanted. Um It's something that she's been trying to get for a little while through medical school and nothing had sort of happened. So when she had the opportunity to do the air ambulance for four weeks, she's obviously thought, you know what I'm going to, I'm going to pay the money for that. Um I personally didn't want to pay for my UK based elective because I didn't have much better cash and I knew that the Philippines one was going to cost me quite a bit, which brings me on to my last point, which is save money early. Um These things will always end up being more expensive than you anticipate. There will be hidden costs. Obviously, if you're going abroad, you might need to get a visa, you might not need to get a visa. For example, I don't have to get one for the Philippines because I'm going for less than 30 days. Um But some of the ways that I have funded this um so I've worked the whole way through UNI, um, but I've tried to do a few extra hours, um, part time work. I've just sold the majority of my clothes on vintage did. Um, I've put stuff on Facebook marketplace. Um, just because I knew it would be useful to have this extra spare cash to try and, and pay for it because they, a lot of them aren't cheap. Um, if you have contacts in hospitals that might take you for an elective, um, you might be able to get it for free. Unfortunately, I don't have that. I've come from a non medical family. I don't know any doctors in hospitals that are outside of where I've been at university. Um, so I've been quite lucky that I sort of managed to get it through Twitter, which I would highly recommend, you know, I, like I say I had almost 100 people um, replying to that tweet with come here and do this. This is the contact email, come here and do this. This is the contact email. Um So, you know, whatever way you can try and sort something out, I'd recommend it if you can get it without paying. Um, but most people I know have had to pay. Um, and it varies in terms of price, but I'd say everything is at least 650 lbs upwards. Um, some people up to 2.5 1000 lbs. Um And on that note when you do start looking for electives, um, you'll see a lot of third party companies like elective companies. Um, our medical school really try to push us away from using those companies. A because they're very, very expensive and b because they aren't necessarily ethically doing it. Um A lot of it is travel tourism which you want to try and avoid doing where you can. Um So what I did was I looked at some of those companies more for inspiration of what they were offering, what locations, what they're, how they were advertising it as what you could do, ask you with that. And then I then contacted the areas that they were selling electives up um separately and or try to organize it direct through the hospital. And I think that that's probably the best way to go about it. Um I know one person who had it priced up to go to Vietnam, I think for four weeks and he said it was looking at being about 4000 lbs through this third party um company. So, you know, way up. It depends like the good thing about that would be that everything is planned for you. Everything's organized for you, but you'd be paying a significant premium for that. Um So this is what other people I know we're doing. Um So one of my housemates, um she's doing eight weeks of cardio thoracic surgery in Cyprus. Um This has been, she's organized this because she, she's from Cyprus. So she knows people at the hospital there. So I don't believe she's paying for that. Um My other housemates, she's doing anesthetics in ST Lucia. Um like I mentioned, she is paying for that and I think it's somewhere in the region of 2000 lbs. Um Someone else in my year is doing an eight week yoga retreat in Devon. I don't know the specifics of this one and it depends what your medical schools requirements are. Um I know that some medical schools are really keen on having you doing clinical work for your elective. Um Whereas some medical schools aren't as first. But yeah, he's doing an eight week yoga retreat. I think he's spun it as holistic health care. So that sounds quite fun, quite relaxing. Something a bit different. Not too taxing. Um Mentally someone else is doing medical French. So they're learning medical French. Another girl. I know she is doing medical illustration. Um So what she's doing is she's essentially traveling and then in each place she, each country she visits, she's going to find a plant that is native to that country. Um that is then used in medicine. Um And she's going to draw it. Um One of my friends, she's going to Everest base camp doing anesthetics. She's organized this through a doctor at the hospital where we're on placement. Um I think he runs the, the sort of expedition every other year. And he's taking maybe four or five medical students with him. Um To that quite a few people are doing desk based electives. So that's doing audits, quality improvement projects, essay based. Um And then what the reason they're doing that is that it allows them to travel whilst they're doing their elective. Um For example, the guy I was mentioning who priced up Vietnam through that third party company and what he's ended up doing is he's contacted his G P practice where he did his GP placement, asked them if he can do an audit for them. Um And he's essentially going to collect all of the data before he goes on his elective. And then he's going to um do all of this statistical analysis and write it all up whilst he's away. But like I say, check with your university if they're okay with that, they might want you to be in hospital do in healthcare doing something that's very hands on or they might be a little bit more flexible um to allow you to do something that's not as academically challenging. Yeah. Has anybody got any questions? Speak now? Forever, hold your peace. Um Until someone thinks that question I have one. So would you recommend doing an elective in an area that interests you or do you think that it's good to explore something that you may not have thought about before? So there's two ways to look at it. Um I know some people who went down the exploring other areas route. So I know some people who have booked electives that are in things that we don't get much exposure to at medical school. Um So plastic surgery, E N T ophthalmology, uh medical ethics. Um but I know that we get exposure to medical ethics, but they've managed to get an elective around it. Um So it depends what you want if you're quite set on a specialty. So, for example, I'm pretty set on pediatrics. So I knew that at least one of my electives I wanted to do something pediatrics based. Um then it would be useful in that way. Um I think I've found quite a good balance in that. I've got my royal healthcare one, which will expose me two things that I maybe haven't seen unusual presentations, um illnesses that we don't necessarily get here in the UK and also the exposure to a different healthcare system um to see how that works. Um It depends what you want essentially. Um And it depends what sort of specialty you think you might want to go into. Um Because obviously with specialty train in, like with all of the bottlenecks, like it's obviously going to be good to have stuff on your portfolio. Um So I know a lot of people who are keen on anesthetics, for example, they've worked really hard to try and get anesthetics electives because it'll look good on their portfolio for if they come to specialty train in applications. Whereas if you think that you might want to do a specialty, that's a little bit more generic as such. It could be good to get exposure to something a bit more niche because you've got the opportunity to and you aren't like, drive in to get those, like the exposure to a specialty. Um, I know that a lot of people who are quite keen to do surgery have tried to get surgical electives again because it's good for your portfolio. So it depends what you want to do. You want to be perfect. Um I think someone just asked, when do you think you should start planning? Um So I know that all of the different medical schools do different, like they do their electives at different times. Um So as a timeline, um my elective is literally my last eight weeks of my fifth year. As soon as I come off elective, I have two weeks and then I graduate. Whereas I know some people they do them at the end of fourth year, some people do them halfway through fifth year. Um I would say start looking about 12 months in advance. Um maybe a little bit more, try to have something generically planned for maybe eight months before you're due to go. Obviously, a medical school will have its own set of deadlines. We had to submit a, we had to submit a form with what our basic idea was at the end of fourth year. Um, and they even said on that, like we know that plans will change. We know that some of you haven't actually got anything sorted out, but we want a brief outline of what you're hoping to do and that was at the end of fourth year. So that was about 12 months before we're obviously due to go. Um, but then they've had other deadlines since then where we've had to update them with what our plans are. And it's only really about two months ago that they said, right, we want a bit more of a concrete plan. We want the address of where you're going, we want the address of your accommodation, we want your flight details and that kind of thing. Um But yeah, it's probably say like definitely towards the end of fourth year, you should really be starting to think about it. Like I say, I left it quite late. Um compared to some people which as much as I'm excited for the electives that I've got planned. Um I think I would have liked to have started earlier. Um just because like I mentioned my flight prices shot up. Um a lot of places that did get back to me, they were full. Um So I possibly like missed on opportunities for quite a few good things. Um just because I applied too late. Anybody else. Yeah, it doesn't look like anyone has any other questions. Um So for those of you who are still with us, thank you for joining. Um Make sure to fill in the feedback form so that you can get a certificate saying that you attended the talk. And thank you Phoebe for talking about electives. It was really useful if you have any other questions, Phoebe, can they email you if you think of any? Yeah. Yeah, of course they can, I don't know how is there a way to send them my email? Yeah, I can take it in the chat. Pop. Yeah or I can do it actually. Um that was me. Uh yeah, if anybody has any questions um the middle bit is an L not an eye or a one W four L 58 um but yeah, email any questions um and that kind of thing, I'm happy to answer them. Perfect. Thank you for joining everyone. Thank you for having me. It was a great talk, bro. I'll see you later. Perfect. Everyone. Feel free to leave when, when you're ready. Thank you. See you later guys like just a couple more people.