Learning without borders: Med students take on the world

More U.S. medical schools are offering overseas clerkships, and students are eager to go.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. March 12, 2007.

They bounced along the rutted road to Eldoret, Kenya, with their patient lying across the SUV's backseat. One team member carried the woman, Ann, who was wasted from AIDS, into the emergency department. It was 2004, and Sonali Sakaria, MD, then a fourth-year medical student from Indiana University School of Medicine, walked alongside. She tried to not gag on the stink of feces.

Medicine in a developing nation brings a host of unexpected sights and smells, as well as more significant challenges, such as limited access to diagnostic tools like x-rays. But for medical students, a two-month stint in a developing nation can be the highlight of their training.

"The patients were so appreciative," said Dr. Sakaria, now a second-year internal medicine resident at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. "They made you feel proud to be in medicine."

U.S. medical schools such as Indiana University are making significant contributions to health care worldwide and in the process are giving medical students, residents and practicing physicians the chance to benefit personally and professionally as they share their expertise.

Ninety-six medical schools among the 125 members of the Assn. of American Medical Colleges offer medical students elective international rotations. At least half of the 23 osteopathic schools have overseas training. Data from past years are scarce, but anecdotally medical education leaders said there has been rapid growth in such alliances in the past decade.