Name
Email
Project title
Rhiannon Turney
Rhiannon_turney@hotmail.com
A medical elective in East Timor
Location of your Elective
Bairo Pite Clinic, Dili, East Timor
Contact details for your elective (e.g.
Website address or email address of
your project co-ordinator)
What did you achieve?
www.bairopitehospital.org/
bpc@bairopiteclinic.org;
bairopiteclinic@ymail.com
I achieved the following objectives:
1. To observe and practice medicine in a
resource-poor country
2. To
familiarise
myself
with
the
presentation and management of medical
emergencies and tropical diseases.
3. To immerse myself in a new culture,
improving my communication skills and
gaining an understanding of the issues
affecting the daily living of the Timorese.
On top of these, I gained confidence, communication
skills, organisational skills and diplomacy skills,
essential in becoming a junior doctor.
Would you recommend this location /
project to others?
Further comments (e.g. Travel advice,
tips for organising an elective similar
to this etc.)
Would you be happy for our members
to contact you for advice?
Further comments (e.g. A review of
your trip) max. 500 words.
I would highly recommend Bairo Pite Clinic, East Timor to
medical students as a brilliant place to do their elective.
At Bairo Pite Clinic medical students are given a great deal
of responsibility and take on the roles of junior doctors.
Though an elective here is hard work, it is extremely
enjoyable, and equips you with many skills and much
knowledge essential for becoming a doctor.
Arranging my elective to East Timor was very simple.
Flights were around £1000 and the clinic arranged
accommodation for me, which was $350 a month for an
en-suite double room with laundry included, though there
were cheaper options available. Food is very cheap in East
Timor, and eating locally it can cost around $5 a day.
As a lone female travelling here, it is important to stick to
travel advice such as not getting a taxi by oneself or
walking around alone after dark. However, it is generally a
very friendly and safe country.
Yes.
East Timor is a mountainous island with green valleys, rice
fields and coffee plantations. Having achieved
independence in 2002, East Timor is still recovering from a
civil war with Indonesia and most people live in poverty.
Dili, the capital of East Timor has a population of 235,000
people and is situated on the coast. Though there is little
to see in the city itself, the surrounding area offers a
myriad of dive sites, white sandy beaches, dense jungles
and mountain trekking.
Bairo Pite Clinic was founded by Dr Dan Murphy in 1999 in
Dili, providing immediate healthcare in a humanitarian
crisis. As the civil war ended, Bairo Pite Clinic adapted and
transformed from an emergency medical service to a
more comprehensive community healthcare facility.
The clinic now sees 200 outpatients a day and has over 50
inpatient beds. Half of these beds are used for TB
patients. The clinic also has an emergency room, a
malnutrition ward and a maternity centre, delivering 3-4
babies per day. There are also a number of mobile clinics
each week, with which doctors or nurses travel to rural
communities up to 4 hours away to provide medical care.
The clinic provides free healthcare and relies heavily on
donations. There are a handful of doctors at the clinic and
the help of medical students is relied heavily upon. The
clinic is resource-poor and has few facilities.
My role at the clinic was very similar to that of a junior
doctor in hospitals in the UK. A ward round would take
place every morning, led by Dr Dan, and my day would
then largely consist of doing jobs for the inpatients, such
as taking them for x-ray, performing ECGs or taking
bloods, and clerking and examining new patients. I also
had opportunities to deliver babies and attend to
incoming emergencies such as road traffic accidents which
were very common.
I encountered many diseases that I have never been
exposed to in the UK, and almost all of the diseases I
encountered had presented late. Thus there was a vast
array of clinical signs present, most of which I had never
seen before. Some of these diseases included TB, HIV,
typhoid, dengue, malaria, rheumatic heart disease, Taenia
solium worms, various forms of cancer, cryptococcal
meningitis and Hirschprung’s disease.
I benefited greatly from the amount of responsibility
given to me at Bairo Pite Clinic. Taking on the role of a
junior doctor helped me to obtain organisational skills,
communication skills and diplomacy skills essential for
being a doctor. Being the first person to see and clerk
many of the patients, I had to be able to recognise
straight away how unwell they were and to formulate a
plan of management in my head. Furthermore, I was able
to practice a number of clinical skills that I rarely get to
practice in the UK.
Bairo Pite Clinic has been an essential part of my training
to be a doctor and though hard at times, was a thoroughly
enjoyable experience.