Nasgp | The Art Of Gp Locuming

Few things in Cuba are easy. Most countries faced with what Cuba has lived with for more than half a century would be failed states. Cuba keeps going, with hardship and sacrifice, but a shared vision. The reputation of Cuba’s health service – providing rich-country outcomes on a poor-country budget – attracts interest from politically aware medical students. But arranging an elective there, well, no es fácil. Fidel Castro’s Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina provides medical training for poor students from other countries, but few people in Cuba’s health service are aware that medical training worldwide often includes an elective. Only the occasional foreign student managed to penetrate the indifference, the bureaucracy, the lack of information and the limitations of Cuba’s IT, and arrange an elective. I was fortunate to meet a Cuban doctor with the imagination to think outside the restrictive Cuban box. He had welcomed one such applicant. We discussed the practicalities of an elective programme, and in 2010