Medical education through an invasion: insights from an elective programme for Ukrainian medical students at the University of Cambridge

Joy Hodkinson; Mark Lillicrap; Paul Wilkinson; Stephen Bevan; Tamari Shenheliia; Vilena Chupina; Jonathan Fuld

doi:10.3389/fmed.2023.1211526

Medical education through an invasion: insights from an elective programme for Ukrainian medical students at the University of Cambridge

Front Med (Lausanne). 2023 Sep 28:10:1211526. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2023.1211526. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Joy Hodkinson¹, Mark Lillicrap², Paul Wilkinson², Stephen Bevan², Tamari Shenheliia², Vilena Chupina², Jonathan Fuld²

Affiliations

¹ NHS Lothian, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
² School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Abstract

Medical students in Ukraine have faced extraordinary disruption to their clinical studies with both the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent Russian military invasion forcing a majority of their learning to be conducted remotely. Over the summer of 2022, the School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge hosted 20 medical students from Kharkiv National Medical University for a seven-week intensive clinical elective programme. The aim was to provide an immersive clinical placement that would help students to attain the necessary knowledge and experience to become competent and confident practising doctors. This perspective piece aims to support the development of future equivalent exchanges through outlining the placement's context, its planning and implementation, evidence of placement impact, and finally reflections and learning points.

Keywords: Cambridge; Kharkiv; Ukraine; elective; medical; placement; student; war.

Grants and funding

The authors declare that the elective programme received funding from Illumina Biotechnology Company and a donor. Funding was used solely for the cost of running the seven-week elective programme. This included aspects such as travel, accommodation, visas and student stipends, as well as delivery of the educational programme. The authors declare that this perspective piece received no funding from Illumina Biotechnology Company or other donors. The funders were not involved in the article design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article, or the decision to submit it for publication.