Medicine & Physiotherapy - INDIA Project Information for Medicine in India

Volunteer Medical Placements in India

Projects Abroad has worked in India for more than 10 years, organising a number of successful and rewarding voluntary placements. The medical projects we organise provide our volunteers with incredibly interesting and eye opening experiences.

Volunteers work in many different hospitals, clinics and centres for traditional medicine in the state of Tamil Nadu, where they can learn and improve on their medical skills.

Our volunteers are placed in a variety of different health centres, most of them privately funded. They include hospitals, nursing homes, maternity hospitals, dental clinics, or leprosy hospitals. Big hospitals contain a large number of departments including anesthesia, dermatology, ENT, obstetrics, pediatrics, psychiatry, radiology, gynecology, hematology, microbiology, orthopedics, pathology and surgery, but smaller ones will only have a few of these departments.

Volunteers have the opportunity to work in several different wards and departments of the hospital they are placed in. In some departments of the hospital you will feel like you are of benefit by helping with the workload. However, in other departments you will primarily be an observer, which means that although you are not directly helping the hospital, you are increasing your own knowledge of medicine, knowledge which you can later put into practice.

As a volunteer you will shadow the doctor, observe treatments, accompany the doctors during ward rounds and help the nurses in their day-to-day work. You may even be allowed to observe surgeries. Indian doctors are friendly and willing to help the volunteers who have little or no background knowledge. However, you have to be patient in gaining information from them, since they are often very busy.

Most hospitals are open around the clock and become like a second home. However you will normally be expected to work between 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and for a few hours in the evening. So in general you will work for about 7 hours a day from Monday to Friday. Sometimes you will have to get up early in the morning and go to bed late at night to attend emergency cases/surgeries.

Observing how the medical process works in a developing country, and more than that, being actively involved in it is an amazing opportunity, regardless of whether you are a pre-medical student or are already at university.

The doctors and nurses with whom the volunteers work appreciate the cultural exchange that is brought by the projects volunteers and are more than happy for you to be involved in most aspects of their work in the hospital.