Based at the Christchurch campus and working in Greymouth,
University of Otago Medical School students Nicola Shaw
(left) and Kerry Short are the latest to benefit from the
Queenstown-based Pat Farry Rural Health Education Trust
travelling scholarship. Photo by the Greymouth Star.
The Queenstown trust set up to bolster health services
for rural communities sent the first recipient of its
independent scholarship to Nepal on Monday to further her
education.
University of Otago Medical School students Nicola Shaw and
Kerry Short, who are based at the Christchurch campus, are to
gain experience in rural health centres abroad after they
were granted $5000 each by the Pat Farry Rural Health
Education Trust to help their elective travel in the first
term of 2013.
Chairman John Farry said the trust's travelling scholarship
"assists young people to spend valuable time in innovative
and challenging overseas situations, to return, and to become
the new generation of idea generators here in New Zealand".
Ms Short departed on Monday for the Chitwan district of
Nepal, where she will join a travelling rural clinic-based
programme called Hope and Home Nepal.
She is scheduled to arrive in Katete, eastern Zambia, on
Christmas Eve to begin a six-week placement in the St Francis
Hospital, a small base hospital serving a large rural
population.
Ms Short is a pilot and has also arranged to join the Flying
Medical Service in Arusha, Tanzania, for four days.
Set to travel to Ecuador in late February, Ms Shaw will join
a mobile surgical bus operated by the Cinterandes Foundation,
for five weeks.
She will also travel to the St Francis Hospital in Zambia.
Ms Shaw and Ms Short are both fifth-year students who chose
to spend their year based in Greymouth as part of the rural
medical immersion programme.
The programme was established by Dr Pat Farry, late of
Queenstown, in 2007.
Every year, between 20 and 25 medical students considering a
rural-based medical career choose real-life learning in one
of six rural centres. Transferring to one of the centres to
live for the year, students learn under the guidance of
experienced GPs, rural hospital generalists and tertiary
hospital specialists.
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