Tessa volunteering experience

Volunteering abroad can be an immensely rewarding, yet also challenging experience. I have been fortunate enough to do this twice during my physiotherapy studies, in Nepal and Mexico

More often than not, English is not widely spoken, if at all. Speaking the local language can help build a rapport with patients, however when my Spanish and Nepalese attempts failed (which was often) I was also able to really develop my non-verbal skills including the use of gestures, demonstration and eye contact to express what I was trying to say.

All of these non-verbal skills are transferable to any clinical settings when working as a physiotherapist, especially when working with those patients who have communication issues. I found that I especially drew on these experiences when on my stroke rehabilitation placement in third year.

Working with local communities:

The places I volunteered in both Nepal and Mexico were poorer communities and on top of this these countries receive much less health and social care support from the Government compared to the UK. We are incredibly lucky with the NHS system here.

It was great to be part of voluntary organisation which aimed to empower patients to be as independent as possible, whilst also helping families, caregivers and healthcare staff by delivering training, and providing second hand equipment for them to use. These aspects of patient care are routinely considered as part of their ongoing health care and social support when working with patients in hospitals or in the community in the UK. However you will find this is not always the case when working abroad and so these volunteer programmes can be a good opportunity to hone in these skills.

Training:

Generally the staff were very encouraging for us to impart our knowledge and skills with them and were grateful to learn from us as we were from them. You can learn so much from these projects, firstly because their ways of working are so different, but also because they have more limited or are lacking in certain resources so you learn to be creative and think outside the box. Delivering manual handling training was beneficial in enhancing my demonstration and presentation skills and was useful to both healthcare staff as well as patients’ families. Plus we learnt lots of new things from the staff there!

You can read all of Tessa’s accounts on the benefits and challenges of volunteering abroad if you follow this link to her blog

https://juniorphysiotherapist.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/first-blog-post/