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EM elective in SA

Fellow medics,

I'm currently trying to arrange an elective in emergency medicine for early 2021. I know these are a bit hard to come by so I've been trying to move fairly quickly with the application processes. I think I'm already too late to apply for most trauma places in South Africa, but I only found out my elective group a few weeks ago (bummer).

I've been looking at applying to emergency medicine electives (which would be purely medical/ non-surgical) but trying to search for other students' experiences on these inevitably leads to people who pursued trauma and/ or surgery-based emergency electives. Has anyone any experience of medical EM in South Africa? I'm a bit hesitant to jump into something where I can't really get a feel for what other people did, how the teaching was, what duties were assigned to students and the level of supervision available. I want to be hands on with procedures that are bread and butter to acute medical settings(e.g. bloods, cannulation, ECG, ABGs and so on) and feel like I'm actually contributing while learning.

SA seems like an incredible place with healthcare challenges we rarely face in the UK (if at all), but if they place their elective students in a corner/ the learning opportunities are sparse, it would be sensible to consider elsewhere.

Thank you for your input/ assistance!

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