The Baptist Medical Center has a lot of volunteers and students pass through its doors. They stay for varying lengths of time, from one week to several months. Our first week in Nalerigu, Ghana was Oli Simpson’s last week. He is a British medical student from Guernsey who has been volunteering for 8 weeks to fulfill his degree’s requirement for an elective.
I sat down with Oli the day before he left and interviewed him about his time working here. He describes his stay here and some of the cases he saw. You can listen to the 10-minute audio interview below:
Here is a brief outline of our conversation:
- Introduction/What brought Oli to Nalerigu
- How the 8 weeks have affected his career in medicine (1:26)
- Differences between practicing medicine in Ghana and in the UK (2:38)
- Patients/cases he saw that stood out (3:58)
- Impressions of Mamprusi culture (8:03)
- Pitch to medical students to study/train in at BMC (8:56)
- Close (10:06)
Following are several photos Oli took during his stay in Nalerigu. A word of warning, some of the images are of patients he saw and are quite graphic.