Student electives overseas: their value and some of the difficulties.

The series of student elective articles that featured in the BMJ a few months ago prompted a review of electives within Dundee Medical School: the following figures, observations, and reflections may be of interest. International opportunities All medical schools in Britain provide for elective periods in their undergraduate curricula. Information gathered in 1974 showed that of the total number of students taking electives, the proportion spending the time abroad varied from 10-60%.1 Financial assistance, in the form of scholarships and other awards, is important, considering the high cost of air travel. Hubble' observed, however, that the variation in percentage seemed largely to depend on the degree of enthusiasm shown by staff and students. Enthusiasm has been reflected in the steadily increasing numbers of Dundee undergraduates in recent years who have chosen to spend short periods of elective study in other countries, some visiting the United States or Canada and others travelling to developing countries. In 1974-5 nine students from Dundee spent elective periods in North America, while 13 went to developing countries: by 1978-9 the corresponding figures were 11 and 31. In these years the proportions of final-year students studying overseas were 250% and 38% respectively. By the end of session 1979-80 the proportion is likely to be 600. Indications are that growing numbers of medical students will be attracted to overseas elective opportunities in the years ahead. Medical schools abroad also include electives as an approved part of the undergraduate course, and increasing numbers of applications are made for elective attachments in British medical schools. Since 1974, 156 medical students from 74 different medical schools (57 overseas) have spent short elective periods in Dundee. Elective applications from a further 250 students in various parts of the world were rejected because places were not available. Difficulties of organisation This international movement of senior clinical students is a recent development, and no real organisation has been set up to cope with it. The cumulative effect of medical students all over the world seeking electives outside the home university has created a force to be reckoned with. In most schools the students themselves are responsible for making their own arrangements. In Dundee this is beginning to cause problems, presumably not unique to our medical school. For example, heads of departments often make complex arrangements for study at the request of prospective "visiting students," only to have their programmes rejected in favour of …