I will be visiting Eldoret in Western Kenya for a clinical elective through the Duke Global Health Institute and AMPATH Kenya collaboration. I will be spending a total of 8 weeks, divided equally between pediatric and adult clinical services at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. There I will be working alongside local medical staff in the clinical care of patients on the medical wards, subspecialty services and Intensive Care Units, in addition to outpatient clinics. As a part of the clinical medicine team, my roles will include providing direct care to patients, in addition to teaching medical students and medical officers.
I will be working at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya. The hospital is a multi-specialty referral hospital serving a catchment population of approximately 25 million people from Kenya, Eastern Uganda, South Sudan, Northern Tanzania, and Democratic Republic of Congo. It has an inpatient bed capacity of over 750 beds and provides care to more than 600,000 inpatients and outpatients annually. Several subspecialty services are established at the hospital including cardiology, ICU, oncology and transplant services.
I look forward to working with the diverse patient population served by Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. As someone committed to a long-term career in global health, this experience represents an exceptional privledge to both contribute meaningfully to patient care and learn from the individuals and communities I hope to serve. Caring for the patient population here will deepen my clinical knowledge of conditions that are uncommon in high-resource settings, expand my ability to provide culturally competent care, and strengthen my skills in navigating the logistical and systemic challenges that often affect health outcomes in low-resource settings.
During my time in Kenya, I hope to meaningfully contribute to both patient care and medical education. In my clinical work, I would like to bring a collaborative, thoughtful approach to diagnosis and management of patients—drawing from the training and experiences of providers from multiple healthcare systems.
Beyond the bedside, I hope to contribute to the medical education of learners of various levels including medical students and medical officers. At the same time, I look forward to learning from the clinical expertise of Kenyan providers—particularly their skill in managing complex conditions within resource-limitations.
I have a long-standing passion for global health equity, shaped by my experiences seeing the effects of poverty and limited healthcare access in my home country of Sudan. My experience during the global health clinical elective will provide me with a valuable opportunity to deepen my understanding of healthcare in low-resource settings and to acquire hands-on experience that will be crucial for my career development. This experience will be invaluable in helping guide me to a career dedicated to advancing global health equity.
During my trip I had the privilege of working in several departments of the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital and caring for a variety of patients including pediatric and adult patients. I greatly enjoyed working the with the Kenya medical students, interns and registrars and learning from their medical management within resource limitations. I was able to contribute by helping provide medical education to medical students and interns on topics in general pediatrics and general medicine. I was also able to help with direct patient care and medical management in coordination with the senior registrars on the teams. Lastly, I helped provide support to medical students in a QI project aimed at improved vital sign collection on the pediatric and medicine wards.
