Medical Volunteer Opportunities Abroad

As a physician or nurse, you’ve dedicated your life in service to others. You’ve used your skills and expertise to heal and treat patients to the best of your ability. Whether you’re in a chaotic trauma unit, or a family practice, you’re the type of person who always answers the call to help. What if you could answer that call in countries where doctors and other medical staff are in short supply, and resources are extremely limited?

We offer a range of medical volunteer trips abroad, suitable for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals like midwives, physiotherapists, and dieticians. This experience is a thrilling way for you to do something different by stepping away from your typical environment. It can also help you inject more purpose into your professional life if you’re feeling disconnected or burned out.

Projects are short-term and long-term, the former being ideal if you’re a first-time volunteer. The experience gives you a taste of what it’s really like to work in a developing country before you commit to a placement of two months or more. We provide a safe, hassle-free experience, with everything organised for you and 24/7 support from our in-country staff.

As a medical volunteer abroad with Projects Abroad, your focus will be on:

Treating patients in under-developed hospitals and clinics
Sharing knowledge and exchanging skills with local medical professionals
Learning first-hand about diseases and advanced conditions you wouldn’t ordinarily see in the UK

Our programmes extend to pre-medical and medical students. These projects are structured and ethical, built around supervised observation and experiential education.

We also offer medical volunteer opportunities abroad for high school students ages 15-18, which you can read more about here. These short-term projects are a safe, guided introduction to medicine, focused on shadowing and practicing basic medical skills, like measuring blood sugar levels and talking to a doctor or nurse about what the results mean.

Read on below for specific information on our different medical volunteer opportunities abroad.

Medical Volunteering Abroad for Doctors and Nurses

A professional physical therapist volunteering in Mongolia runs a workshop for local medical staff.

At Projects Abroad, one of the main outcomes we want to see from our volunteer opportunities for doctors, nurses, and medical assistants is an exchange of knowledge and skills between you and local medical professionals. As much as you’re there to give back as a volunteer doctor abroad, you’re also there to learn about how different social, cultural, or religious backgrounds affect medical practices. You can expect to:

Recommend and teach new methods of treatment
Observe procedures different to what you’d use in the UK
Learn how to be more creative in the field when you’re working with limited equipment and other resources
Witness and learn about the treatment of disease and conditions uncommon or eradicated in the UK, like dengue fever, severe nutritional deficiencies, cholera, or malaria
Experience cross-cultural exchange with local people and other volunteers you meet

We run community healthcare outreaches for you to go out into rural, often isolated areas, to provide the basic medical services they lack. During these outreaches, you’ll be able to work with other medical volunteers from around the world. Some of these volunteers are medical students, so you’ll be able to slip into the role of teacher as you work.

Ultimately, this experience will help you grow as a medical professional, no matter where you are in your career.

"The biggest shock I got was delivering two sets of unexpected twins. I thought the nurse was joking when she told me I must feel the patient’s stomach after each birth to check if I could feel another baby inside. I quickly realized she wasn’t joking when I turned my back for a second, and when I turned around a second baby was already on its way into the world. I think I got more of a shock than the mother that her family had just doubled in a matter of seconds!” - Carly F, Midwifery in Tanzania

Medical Volunteering Abroad for Students

An American intern observes surgery on our medical volunteer opportunities abroad for college students in Vietnam.

If you’re working toward applying for a medical degree, or you’re already enrolled in medical school, chances are your schedule’s packed and you’re overwhelmed with classes and work during the semester. The long summer break is the perfect time to get your nose out of those textbooks, and add relevant experiential learning and global awareness to your CV.

Our projects are built for medical student volunteering abroad and as volunteer opportunities for pre-medical participants. They’re balanced between shadowing medical professionals and getting hands-on work done during community healthcare outreaches. You’ll also:

Meet and work with diverse groups of people (great for working on your bedside manner!)
Observe first-hand how doctors in developing countries make diagnoses and decide on a course of treatment
See diseases you’ve only read about in textbooks or heard about on TV, like malaria and polio
Witness how doctors and nurses cope with the limited resources they have

Please be aware that the scope of your work depends on your specific experience and qualifications, and what your local medical supervisor or the hospital allows. This is in line with our own policy and code of conduct about medical volunteer work abroad, which we adhere to strictly across all our healthcare programmes.

My supervising doctor was very insistent that I was exposed to as many aspects of the hospital as possible during my short attachment. As a result, I met many other doctors and observed many other ward rounds besides neurosurgery. I got to spend some time in the cardiology ward and observed vascular, eye and ENT surgeries. By the end of my two weeks in the hospital, I regretted my decision to spend such a short time there, but the experiences I had were unlike anything I would get as a medical student in a UK hospital. - Michelle L, Medicine in Mongolia

How can I volunteer in the medical field?

While we do offer special medical volunteer abroad programmes for specific age groups (i.e. our High School Specials), our general medical projects (Flexi Trips) are entirely flexible and can be customised according to your needs and level of experience. Some of our projects also offer entirely unique experiences. For example, Mongolia is our only destination where you can work a night shift with an ambulance team!

If you’re looking to become a medical volunteer overseas with us, we strongly recommend reaching out to our Project Experts. They’ll be able to advise you on which project: