Clinical Placements In Sri Lanka

In Kandy, you can get experience in departments including psychiatry, surgery, OBG, and general medicine, among many others. For cultural and religious reasons, the practises and attitudes towards medicine in Sri Lanka may differ from what you’ve learnt. Our partner hospital is also known for its extraordinarily broad range of ICUs including: surgical ICU, medical ICU, cardiothoracic ICU, the coronary care unit, and cardiac ICU. Treatments are free at the point of care for patients in Sri Lanka, but a lack of resource is still a real challenge for local staff.

As a midwifery student in Sri Lanka, you’ll learn all about the differences between maternity at home versus a developing country. Spending time in our partner hospital’s OBG department you’ll see women giving birth with little to no pain relief whatsoever — the cost of medication in Sri Lanka is relatively high. C-sections are also common, making up around 40% of all births. A big part of the placement here is interacting with local midwives. You’ll learn how they get around the resource limitations, and you can share with them your knowledge from home.

The radiology department in our partner hospital in Kandy is one of the few in Sri Lanka that offer all types of radiographic diagnostic services under one roof. This means the department is often busy despite being open 24/7. To give you some idea, on any given day, local staff can perform up to 400 X-rays, 150 CT scans, and 10 MRIs. Undertake your placement here, and you can choose to rotate through any (or all) of the following: X-ray rooms, the dental X-ray department, the CT room, the MRI unit, the DSA unit, and the mammography unit. If your focus is radiotherapy, you can get experience alongside local radiotherapists to learn about the challenges associated with administering treatments in a low-resource setting.

As a dental student in Sri Lanka, you’ll begin to understand the difficulties of delivering care in a low-resource environment. You’ll be welcomed in by the small, but specialised team here, and you can tap into the breadth of knowledge staff have between them. You’ll get experience across a broad range of areas. whether that be in orthodontics, in the OPD, in maxillofacial or elsewhere.

In Kandy, tropical communicable diseases are common. You may even see cases of diseases that you have never even heard of — chikungunya and Chagas disease to name two. You will be familiar with some diagnostic equipment here, but other machines may be outdated when compared with what you’re used to back at home. Due to cultural and religious factors, the approaches and attitudes towards clinical practice in Sri Lanka might differ from what you've been accustomed to. Our partner hospital is also known for its intensive care facilities including a coronary care unit, and surgical, medical, cardiothoracic, and cardiac ICUs.

Our main partner hospital in Sri Lanka offers you the chance to gain extensive experience across a range of departments. This will give you a broader understanding of Sri Lanka’s healthcare system. It’s also the case that you’ll see conditions that are either rare or non-existent in Australia. These include dengue fever, tuberculosis and malnutrition. Our partner hospital is connected to a large nursing college in the city, so you can exchange stories with Sri Lankan nursing students.

On an OT placement in Kandy, you'll spend time addressing injuries and neurological conditions with the local occupational therapy team. Other common conditions you might see include burns, fractures, limb deformities, cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome, cerebral visual impairments, and skeletal injuries. You'll see how local staff work with limited resources to restore mobility, prevent scarring, strengthen muscles, improve coordination, and enhance sensory and motor function and well-being. With up to 30 patients daily, you'll learn how the team manages referrals, assessments, follow-ups, and treatment plans, working to develop individualised rehabilitation strategies.

You'll see many cases and treatments in the Emergency Treatment Unit at your placement hospital in Kandy. Some will be familiar — road traffic accidents, myocardial infarction, strokes. But others will be far from what you know, like snake bites. The department is resource-limited but busy, with up to 100 patients admitted in a 24-hour period. You could also get access to and experience with some cross-over facilities like MRI and X-ray.

A pharmacy placement in Kandy will highlight local practitioners' daily limitations. Spending time in our major partner hospital, you’ll come to understand how local specialists manage and distribute the limited supplies they have. There is a noticeable lack of funding here, and administrative processes are often manual. When it comes to patients, you’ll encounter people from Kandy itself and those from rural communities who’ve travelled great distances to receive treatment.

Undertaking your placement in the rheumatology department’s physiotherapy unit, Kandy offers a varied placement. You’ll experience in several areas including the neurosurgical ward, surgical ICU and cardiothoracics. You can also spend time in the OPD, helping to rehabilitate patients using basic gym equipment and other treatments. The OPD sees a steady stream of patients daily. Common conditions include cerebral palsy, stroke, fractures, burns, MSK, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and beyond. If you’re interested in sports medicine, you can spend time in the dedicated unit that offers various services, including sports medicine clinics for school children and physiotherapy programs for athletes.