Charley Peal has been the Medsin national exchange…

Charley Peal has been the Medsin national exchange officer for the last 18 months and this is her 3rd and final IFMSA General Assembly. Here, she blogs on her experiences so far, her expectations and goals.

I wasn’t expecting to attend another GA, but, having seen the candidature and the marketing for AM2011 Denmark in Montreal last August, I was very excited to be able to attend the actual event.  Paul and I have put a lot of time and effort into re-structuring the exchange system in the UK, and it’s a privilege to attend the GA, our final GA, to represent the UK once again in the SCOPE sessions as NEOs.

 

Paul and I have been the National Exchange Officers (NEOs) in the UK for about 18months now. We facilitate the newly named Medsin Exchanges, which are 4week professional exchanges, offered to medical students at the Universities of Leicester, Nottingham, Barts & The London, St Georges, Peninsula and Southampton, which are part of the scheme. This year we have sent nearly 60 students on an exchange, and received 60 students from over 30 countries. With a view to making the exchange programme more sustainable and desirable by more medical schools, Paul and I have worked really hard to standardise the process and the programme to aid the future NEOs and LEOs.

 

So we have now arrived and spent our first night in Copenhagen, for my third, and Paul’s fourth GA. We attended our Standing Committee on Professional Exchange (SCOPE) session this morning, where we facilitated our first Small Working Group (SWG) session on Global Health Education and Exchanges. This is following on from a SWG which we ran in Jakarta at MM2011 and SWGs which were run by Maria from Catalonia at Sub-Regional Training (SRT) Weekends in Istanbul and Budapest this summer. Global Health is a really pertinent issue within SCOPE, and a topic that we are keen to encourage all our outgoing and incoming students to develop and interest in, be it through integrating GHE into the social programme for the incoming students or the academic quality logbook for the outgoing students.

 

In addition to our SCOPE duties, the theme for the GA is incredible – Health and the Future. Today we attended a theme event called The Perfect Man – a 3 part session hosted by various professors, philosophers and members of The Danish Council of Ethics. It was a thought-provoking session, discussing prenatal diagnosis; physical, mechanical and pharmaceutical enhancement; and the search for the perfect man.

 

As day 2 draws to a close, I’m extremely grateful to be here for the 60th IFMSA GA – the UK delegation is awesome and so supportive to all other delegates, the theme is very interesting and relevant, and of course, I’m really happy to see my friends from previous GAs. I’m looking forward to getting stuck in with SWGs, trainings and theme events over the next few days and enjoying my last GA to the max.

 

Charley Peal