We facilitate medical elective placement in Africa for physician assistant students seeking clinical training opportunity. Our physician assistant students work closely with a physician in our partner hospitals. Our program strongly complements the didactic component of physician assistant training with hands on experience. Check out our blogs and testimonials for the different learning experiences by our past students.

The overwhelming demand for healthcare services in Africa, coupled with extremely limited resources, provides physician assistant program participants with a rare opportunity for significant hands on experience. Our program is suited to meet various kinds of educational requirements such as electives, clinical preceptorship, independent study abroad or internships abroad requirements.

We prefer to place students who have already had several clinical rotations and hence will use our elective placement as an opportunity to really "bring together" both the theory learned in the didactic component and the skills learned in clinical rotations.

The benefits of our Physician Assistant program include:

• Provide extensive hands on learning experience – our participants leave our programs having enhanced their experience levels with various skills
• Provide an opportunity to enhance essential Physician Assistant skills such as history taking, interviewing, physical examinations, ordering and interpreting lab tests, diagnosis, treatment planning, prescriptions, and assisting with surgeries
• Compare and analyze healthcare access and delivery in a different setting
• Opportunity to experience tropical medicine and unusual diseases
• Opportunity to see diseases at advanced clinical stages
• Meet elective and clinical rotation requirements under practitioner supervision with evaluation during and after the program
• Satisfy independent study or internship abroad for credit
• Demonstrate and satisfy global intellectual curiosity
• Safe and secure program experience while abroad
• Cultural exchange and exposure, particularly from peer students in host country and community
• Travel

We work with prospective participants to assist with designing their own program if desired, but our standard physician assistant elective provides broad hands on experience for students at the tail end of their studies. The program runs between 4 to 8 weeks, depending on elective preference. Students work closely with and under the supervision of a certified physician and are evaluated during and at the end of their placement. Sessions are structured and regularly scheduled, usually in a government community health facility. To get the most out of the program, participants ought to be willing to work some weekends, holidays and night shifts – past participants have found these shifts offer even more learning experience.

We also organise for the students safari add ons at the end of the program to parks in either Kenya or Tanzania, including a hike to Mt. Kilimanjaro. See the safari link at http://electiveafrica.com/safari