Clinical Placements In The Philippines

On your medical elective in the Philippines, you’ll see everything from tuberculosis to clubfoot, and maybe even the odd rooster bite. The typical Filipino diet is high in sugar, and you’ll see firsthand how that leads to an inordinate number of hypertension and cardiac arrest cases. In emergency, you’re likely to see respiratory failure, gastroenteritis, burns, rabies, hernias, and hyperglycemia. Internal medicine is great if you want to get experience with conditions such as acute pancreatitis, stroke, and diabetic ketoacidosis. You’ll learn how staff treat these conditions in a low-resource clinical environment. Iloilo presents unique opportunities if you’re looking for a medical elective in Asia.

The experience midwives can expect from a placement in Iloilo is wide-ranging. You can spend time in the milk bank, the OBG ward, OBG emergency, the antenatal clinic, and of course the delivery room. The delivery room sees a significant number of births each day,  allowing you to get an understanding of the differences in clinical practice between home and in the Philippines.

As a physiotherapy student on placement in Iloilo, you’ll observe and in some instances help to treat conditions like Bell’s palsy and cerebral palsy, burns, and trauma related injuries. The department’s equipment is often handmade, but functional, and you’ll use this equipment to help rehabilitate patients. Local practices may differ from what you’re used to. For example,  TENS machines are favoured, as is paraffin therapy which is also used on occasion.

On your biomedical science placement in Iloilo, you’ll get to grips with a broad range of tropical communicable diseases, like dengue fever, and their diagnosis and treatment. You might also choose to spend time in the animal bites clinic, where you’ll see everything from dog to snake bites and the occasional resultant case of rabies. You can get broader experience in departments like A&E, where you’ll see patients present with conditions like respiratory failure, acute gastroenteritis, burns, hernias, and hyperglycemia. And, in the realm of internal medicine, you'll have the opportunity to observe cases like acute pancreatitis and diabetic ketoacidosis, offering insight into how these conditions are managed within the constraints of an under-resourced clinical setting.

In Iloilo, nurses run the wards while patients’ families are responsible for bedside care. This means as a nursing student you can concentrate on the clinical aspects of the role. You can choose to spend time in an outpatient department that looks after a range of areas, from paediatric care to rabies treatments. A&E is also another popular department, where you'll see cases like dengue fever, and severe trauma sustained through construction accidents and RTAs .

You’ll undertake your placement in the largest government tertiary referral hospital on the Island. In fact, the hospital is recognised by the government as a Centre of Excellence. Emergency services are housed in a central building with areas for triage, resuscitation, internal medicine, trauma, ent ophthalmology, orthopaedics, and paediatrics. In this department, you’ll see cases of everything from tropical diseases like dengue fever, right the way through to stab wounds.

The clinical experience you can get in Iloilo as an aspiring radiographer is eye-opening. You’ll spend time in our partner hospital’s busy radiography unit alongside local specialists whose practices will be quite different to what you’re used to. For example, the department has three X-ray machines, but they all use film rather than digital technology, This means you can get experience in the hospital’s darkroom, learning to develop images manually. You’ll see orthopaedic patients, patients from internal medicine, and cardio patients with pulmonary diseases (tobacco use is common in the Philippines). When it comes to radiology, there are two ECG machines, 2-dimensional echo machines, and an array of other diagnostic imaging to explore.

Students who choose to practice pharmacy in Iloilo will be rewarded with insight into a unique system completely different from their own. This is a specialised placement on which you’ll have the chance to rotate through 5 separate departmental pharmacies, gaining practical experience in each. You’ll also have the rare opportunity to observe in theatre, spend time in OBG and antenatal departments to understand how medicines are dispensed in such a low resource setting, and more.

On an occupational therapy placement in Iloilo, you’ll gain experience in the physiotherapy department of our partner hospital. Engaging in a diverse range of conditions like Bell’s palsy, burns, trauma, cerebral palsy, and injuries sustained from traffic accidents, you’ll grow to understand the challenges delivering care in low-resource environments can bring. Gaining insight into the rehabilitation treatment plans of a wide range of patients and how they’re put together will create an experience that will broaden your understanding of healthcare in a global context.