Hospital Volunteering and Shadowing Abroad

[oyoo]

So this may or may not be an atypical experience but I will be moving abroad (East Asia) for two years before applying doing some research and other activities however I still want to volunteer in the hospitals. One of the options I have is to volunteer in the foreigner hospitals/clinics where everyone speaks English and the staff received their medical degrees in the US (90 percent of the time anyway)

However I am also interested in volunteering in the local hospitals. I speak the language so I'm not worried about that aspect but when it's time to apply would it be damaging to have volunteering and Shadowing hours from a hospital abroad? I don't want to not do any type of Shadowing just because I am abroad. I'll likely do both anyway but which would I be able to put in an app.

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[LizzyM]

There is no limit to what you can put in your application. The real value to clinical experiences abroad is being able to compare and contrast with practice in the US. Physiology is the same although the incidence of specific diseases may be different meaning that differential diagnosis and pre-test probability may be different. Culture and the way physicians interact with patients and the way patients and families interact may be different, too. In the English language facility you are likely to see ex-pats including those who speak English as a second language (because they are unlikely to find a clinic where care is delivered in Swedish etc). They are a different group, from a sociodemographic perspective, than the people in their home countries.

It may be an interesting experience as long as you can put it in perspective and understand that it will be different than the US.