Medicine & Physiotherapy - INDIA Daily Life

Life of a Medical Volunteer in India

As a medical volunteer you will find yourself coming into contact with conditions that you wouldn't normally see in Europe and North America, on an almost daily basis. In this context, there are significant opportunities for an eager volunteer to observe, undertake, and more importantly learn about medical practices in India.

Exactly what you will be doing in your hospital or clinic is dependent on your experience and abilities. Gap year volunteers with little or no practical knowledge have a largely observational role, spending perhaps a week at a time in various different departments. Hands-on participation increases with experience, and forth- or fifth-year medical students are able to gain considerable practical experience.

In most cases, the placement supervisor is a senior doctor, who assigns the volunteers to particular staff in whichever department you will be working. You will be provided with opportunities to learn, rather than a course, so determination and initiative are important.

Depending upon the distance to the hospital/ clinic from the accommodation, the volunteers use bicycles, rickshaws or local buses to get to work. The hospital work normally starts at 09:00 and begins with ward rounds with the doctors, during which the doctors explain the type of cases in the in-patient ward. This is followed by observing out-patient treatment where the doctors explain symptoms of each cases and the type of treatment.

Volunteers also often help in a practical level with tasks such as helping the nurses to get the beds ready for the patients, moving the patients, recording blood pressure and temperature.

There is a long lunch break from 14:00 to 18:00, during which time the volunteers go home for lunch and relax, or head into town to go shopping, or use the internet, before returning to the hospital for the evening session. Surgical procedures are mostly undertaken in the evening and all medical volunteers have the opportunity to observe various techniques. The evening work lasts until approximately 21:00 and so volunteers work around 35-40 hours per week from Monday to Friday.

In addition to the above routine there is also the chance to visit specialized hospitals such as a leprosarium, Ayurvedic hospitals - depending on personal preference and the total time they are with us, volunteers normally go for a couple of days to each of these places.

The medical volunteers are mostly accommodated in local families close to the hospitals. Though the facilities are basic, these families take very good care of the volunteers. Most meals are provided by the host families, and volunteers often find that Southern Indian cuisine is as pleasing as it is diverse.  Although you would be sharing the facilities in the house with the family, you would be given separate bedroom, possibly shared with another volunteer, so you do still have your own private space.

Most volunteers take the chance to travel on the weekends to many of the nearby points of interest. Every other weekend, the staff at the Sivakasi Office oragises group trips for all of the volunteers in India. This is a great way to get to know other volunteers, and also a convenient way to explore southern India.  Past trips range from trekking and elephant watching in Thekkady; watching the sun set and rise over three separate bodies of water (the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal) at the southern tip of India in Kanyakumari; and getting together in Sivakasi for the legendary staff vs. volunteers game of cricket.