Healthcare Internships In Sri Lanka

On your medical internship in Sri Lanka, you'll see how different things are from what you’re used to. You’ll observe and treat cases uncommon in America. For example, dengue fever, typhoid, and an inordinately high volume of RTA injuries. You can spend time in a range of departments including oncology, ICU, OBG, general medicine, and general surgery.

While nursing in Sri Lanka in one of our partner hospitals, you can rotate through a range of departments. This allows you to get a broad understanding of Sri Lanka’s healthcare system. You’ll see cases that are either rare or non-existent in America, including dengue fever, tuberculosis, and malnutrition to name but a few.

A pharmacy internship in Kandy will highlight local practitioners' daily limitations. Spending time in our major partner hospital, you’ll come to understand how local specialists manage and distribute the limited supplies they have. There is a noticeable lack of funding here, and administrative processes are often manual. When it comes to patients, you’ll encounter people from Kandy itself and those from rural communities who’ve travelled great distances to receive treatment.

You’ll immediately start seeing the contrasts between maternity in America versus in Sri Lanka. In our partner hospital’s OBG department you’ll see women giving birth with little to no pain relief. This is the result of the relatively high cost of medication in Sri Lanka. C-sections are also common, making up 40% of births. One of the core benefits of an internship here is learning from niche specialists who’ll share their expertise on local conditions and practices.

The radiology department in our partner hospital in Kandy is one of the few in Sri Lanka that offer all types of radiographic diagnostic services under one roof. This means that the department is often busy, even though it’s open 24/7. To give you some idea, on any given day, local staff can perform up to 400 X-rays, 150 CT scans, and 10 MRIs. Undertake your internship here and you can choose to rotate through any (or all) of the following: X-ray rooms, the dental X-ray department, the CT room, the MRI unit, the DSA unit, and the mammography unit. If your focus is radiotherapy, you can get experience alongside local radiotherapists to learn about the challenges of administering treatments in a low-resource setting.

As soon as you set foot on the wards, you’ll begin to understand what we mean when we say ‘low resource environment’. You can experience a broad range of areas in your field, whether that be orthodontics, the OPD, maxillofacial surgery or something else entirely. The unique insight you’ll gain and experiences you’ll have here will help you develop as a professional.

On an OT internship in Kandy, you'll spend time addressing injuries and neurological conditions with the local occupational therapy team. Other common conditions you might see include burns, fractures, limb deformities, cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome, cerebral visual impairments, and skeletal injuries. You'll see how local staff work with limited resources to restore mobility, prevent scarring, strengthen muscles, improve coordination, and enhance sensory and motor function and well-being. With up to 30 patients daily, you'll learn how the team manages referrals, assessments, follow-ups, and treatment plans, working to develop individualised rehabilitation strategies.

You'll see many cases and treatments in the Emergency Treatment Unit at your placement hospital in Kandy. Some will be familiar — road traffic accidents, myocardial infarction, strokes. But others will be far from what you know, like snake bites. The department is resource-limited but busy, with up to 100 patients admitted in a 24-hour period. You could also get access to and experience with some cross-over facilities like MRI and X-ray.

Undertaking your internship in the rheumatology department’s physical therapy unit, Kandy offers a varied placement. You’ll experience in several areas including the neurosurgical ward, surgical ICU and cardiothoracics. You can also spend time in the OPD, helping to rehabilitate patients using basic gym equipment and other treatments. The OPD sees a steady stream of patients daily. Common conditions include cerebral palsy, stroke, fractures, burns, MSK, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and beyond. If you’re interested in sports medicine, you can spend time in the dedicated unit that offers various services, including sports medicine clinics for school children and physical therapy programs for athletes.

Your internship will be in a hospital established in the 1800s, now the second-largest in Sri Lanka. Here, you can gain experience in departments like pathology, virology, microbiology, and hematology. In the recently established molecular biology unit, you'll observe how local specialists use cancer-related DNA testing to identify specific cancer markers. In Kandy, tropical communicable diseases are widespread, allowing you to assist in diagnosing illnesses such as dengue fever, leptospirosis, and cholera.