Things can be fast or things can be slow. Be warned !!

Scores of students having visited Cambodia over the years to do electives with Rose Charities and/Operation FIRST have shown that speed of activity can be very variable. At local holiday time, things can be very slow. Sarah (student) wrote of her time that 'if things got much slower they would stop' . It was holiday time (Pchum Ben) . People dont seem to have time to get sick in holidays ! Fortunately though there was the eye clinc which is always busy. (it is invariably so packed that another NGO comes in and bribes patients away to stand outside their own doors, with offerings of free food when they are have potential donor visitors from overseas coming; so that they can impress them. Its a standing joke at the clinic !) . On the other hand, activity can be very fast, as when one of the external teams visit.

It is very important to keep the above in mind. The medicine and surgery also is not highly sophisticated. Almost nowhere in Cambodia is this so. The message is really that an elective with Operation FIRST / Rose Charities is best suited for those who are interested in the 'total experience' of Cambodia, not simply to focus on medical / surgical activity. Medical Schools the world over run surprisingly different systems. Some give multiple elective periods over the whole training period, some one big elective almost as a 'reward' for hard work over the years , some ask for very focused electives. You should think carefully about what you want out of your elective. My personal view is illness and human mechanisms for coping with it are deeply integrated into the social fabric of the population, and so to try to isolate the simple procedures of our discipline and focus only on those gives a very stilted viewpoint. The counter argument however is that exams have to be passed and experience in procedures is needed to pass them. Bottom line is that it is your call, but an elective in Cambodia may well not offer what you want, so please think carefully. It is almost as disappointing for us, as it is for you, if you feel let down.