News
As published in the Samoa Observer, Saturday, 10 July 2010 (“International students learn at Moto’otua” www.samoaobserver.ws)
International med students learn alongside OUM’s at TTM
Medical students from as far afield as Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia have begun their Medical Elective Rotation Programme at Tupua Tamasese Meaole Hospital (TTM).
 On Wednesday, at the orientation session conducted by Oceania University of Medicine (OUM) student administrator, Angie Alama, students were given a comprehensive overview of what they could expect during their stay in Samoa. This briefing included general information about Samoa, cultural advice, basic medical terms and common phrases in Samoan, and a look at the structure of Samoa’s health system. These international medical elective students undertake their clerkships right alongside OUM students.
While OUM administers and co-ordinates this programme, it is the TTM hospital where the clinical learning takes place under the direct supervision of Le Mamea Dr Limbo Fiu, who heads departments and consultants.
“One of the requirements towards the end of a student’s clinical training is to choose another hospital to have a different experience,” said OUM Associate Professor, Dr Monalisa Punivalu. “Therefore a student from a developed country may opt to go to an underdeveloped country.” The reverse is also common, she said, with three Samoan students currently on a 12-week rotation in Auckland.
During 2009, 192 international students rotated through the OUM/TTM medical elective programme. OUM is proud of the growth and popularity of this programme and continues to offer medical electives to students from a growing network of 52 medical schools from around the world. OUM is in the process of approaching these participating institutions so that its students may have reciprocal rights to medical electives in their countries.
In their applications, students state their specialty areas and where possible, they are assigned to those departments, Dr Punivalu said. These include General Surgery and Ort hopaedics, Internal Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Anaesthesia, Accident Emergency and General Outpatients, Rural Medicine, and Ophthalmology.
All contact with patients is subject to the approval of the clinical supervisor, and students may observe, attend and assist during rounds.
“Documenting a patient’s chart must clearly indicate the writer is a medical student and must be then countersigned by the supervisor,” she said.
Students are also invited to take part in other related activities during their stay.
“These include attending the weekly Continuing Medical Education (CME) lectures, tutorials with OUM students, and the OUM initiative ‘Rotary 5000’ programme, which involves health screening in the villages,” said Dr Punivalu.
Medical elective student, New Zealander Catherine Tauri, who is in her final year at the Dunedin School of Medicine, is primarily interested in surgery. She has already spent time in Nepal and chose Samoa on the advice of Dr Damian Ah Yen, a surgeon at OUM/TTM, with encouragement from her fellow students in New Zealand.
 Tauri’s path to medicine was not without its challenges. She received little encouragement from career advisers and university recruitment staff despite low numbers of Maori applying to go into medicine. As runner-up to Dux at her secondary school, she was academically capable but was told that she should be realistic and go into nursing or radiology.
Ignoring this well-meaning advice, Tauri entered the Dunedin programme and is now in her sixth year. “I’ve always wanted to help people and I’m pretty stubborn. I knew what I wanted to do,” she said.
“My parents said to me that I could do anything I wanted to – basically because they knew I was going to anyway,” she laughed.
She ultimately sees her future in Maori Health and in the meantime, spends time speaking at secondary schools and, contrary to the advice she received, encourages students to overcome the challenges and become doctors.
Medical elective students generally spend four to eight weeks in Samoa. The majority come from Great Britain, with the next biggest group from Australia, followed in order by New Zealand, Germany, and Canada.
Located on the grounds of the National Hospital Complex in Apia, Samoa, Oceania University of Medicine offers a medical education program to an international student body of approximately 110 from five countries. Graduates are receiving their post-graduate specialty/residency training at teaching hospitals in Australia, Samoa, and the United States. Listed in the World Health Organization's World Directory of Medical Schools and recognized by the Education Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, the school is amid its formal accreditation process, expected to be successfully completed in 2010. For more information about OUM, visit www.oceaniamed.org.
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