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is it really worth going abroad for medical electives?
It depends what you want to do and what you want to get out of it. People’s electives and ideas will be so varied. There is no need to go abroad, and plenty of people do interesting things in the UK. However many people choose to go - for the experience of another system (either low resource or a different high income country), to get a particular clinical or research experience not available in the UK or to complement their current experience. Many people just want to travel and see somewhere new - and use their elective as a springboard to then go travelling. So - whether it’s worth it depends on easily you can achieve your objectives in the UK and how much you want / have the finances to travel.
I spent half of my elective in a LMIC in Africa, at a rural mission hospital. I was considering pursuing this long term later in my career, so it was a really useful experience to understand a low resource health setting and way of working, tropical illnesses I hadn’t come across before, as well as do a little bit of travelling. I spent the other half at a hospice within my wider region, getting some more palliative care experience - something I’d only really had 1 day of as a medical student and was was also considering as a career and wanted to spend a longer period doing.