Illinois Medicine

international education by Kevin McKeough University of Illinois Chicago Mexico Dominican Republic Colombia Brazil Peru Bolivia Argentina College of Medicine's Popular international medical training provides A shley Styczynski, MD '12, MPH, still was a few months away from graduation when she found herself caring for severely ill HIV patients at McCord Hospital in Durban, South Africa. "I operated more as an intern than a student. I was given the status of a physician under supervision of an attending," says Styczynski, who chose to spend the first two months of last year at the hospital as one of her elective clinical rotations. This kind of international medical training has become more readily available to College of Medicine students in the past few years through elective rotations in foreign countries, and it's proving increasingly popular. Students and college administrators alike say that such experiences provide them with unique lessons that will be applicable in their careers as physicians, even given the likelihood that they will spend most of their practice in Illinois or elsewhere in the U.S. "Interest in international medical electives is at an all-time high," says Ara Tekian, PhD, MHPE, who became the college's first associate dean for international affairs in August of 2009. Since then, he's cultivated a network of international hospitals that host the growing number of College of Medicine students who want to train in a foreign country. This program has been expanded since Dimitri Azar, MD, MBA, became dean of the College of Medicine. Kathleen Kashima, PhD, senior associate dean of students and 16 | Spr i n g 2 013 interim senior associate dean for undergraduate medical education, reports that she's asked about international educational opportunities every time she makes presentations to prospective students. "Our students have a calling to humanistic medicine, and international experience is something that fulfills that need," she says. These experiences primarily occur as part of the students' fourthyear clinical rotations, which include five months of electives of their own choosing. The college's program offers the option of rotations in 181 hospitals and primary health care centers in 53 countries on six continents (Antarctica, as of yet, is not included). The rotations range from participating in home childbirths in Nigeria to practicing rural medicine in Japan. During the past academic year, 37 students completed elective rotations abroad. They included 10 students who participated in a bilateral exchange program run by the International Federation of Medical Students Association, which arranges for a student from another country to spend a one-month elective at the U of I Hospital while a College of Medicine student studies in the foreign student's home country. "It's totally student-run, sustainable, bilateral," says Yalda Afshar, MD '12, PhD '12, who established the U of I chapter of the IFMSA in 2005. She arranged four electives through the program, including rotations in obstetrics and gynecology in Colombia, Spain and Italy and an emergency medicine rotation split between Israel and the West Bank. Styczynski's rotation in Durban was the fulfillment of a pledge she made after the human suffering she witnessed on a previous trip to South Africa led her to change her career path from wildlife veterinary

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