Most of the time I feel really lucky to be a medical student in Britain. Most of the time it is challenging in lots of ways, professionally and personally. It is not a static career path with lots of opportunities to work and travel together, and has hundreds different facets each one suiting different types of people. But sometimes I get a little fed up with it all. The early starts, the revision at exam time (especially OSCEs) and the sneers of other students when you mention the word ‘medic’.

The other evening I was however humbled into silence, which is something that rarely happens due to my opinions on just about anything and everything. The guy I was talking to is a medical student, of my age and at the same point in his medical training. Instead of being from the British medical system, he had lived all his life and was now being trained in Zimbabwe.

I know a little about the problems in Zimbabwe but what I heard about his training shocked me, especially compared to my tame and controlled clinical contact.

Upon entering medical school and undergoing the relatively traditional anatomy and physiology section of the course he was pressured into making informal diagnosis in hospital settings. There exists a sink or swim mentality that saw him starting his 3rd year being sent for a month to a rural hospital that had limited facilities and only nursing staff. That meant that he had to run the clinical side of the hospital along with 3 other colleges. Being thrown in at the deep end sometimes galvanises people quickly and is a valuable experience. However the stories of watching people die of curable diseases simply because of lack of experience or equipment seem to reflect not a learning experience, but a month of survival. Especially when upon one occasion they were called to a road traffic accident. Upon arriving all they could do was drag the living from amongst the dismembered limbs of the dead. Too much for 2 of the students who left, it was left to the 2 remaining students to triage the patients.

Now this seems a far cry from many of the things that I have seen and done in my training. And for once I am glad. Not to say I am squeamish or do not wish to confront these terrible events. Just that even now, and much less at the beginning of my 3rd year, I would feel ill equipped to deal with the result of such tragedy. And I am now extremely glad of the protracted and relativley sheltered training I am undergoing.