“Many doctors were interested and seemed to learn lots from the presentation and discussion.”
Our Goal
Here at Medics2Mongolia we want to help Mongolian doctors apply for funding, training and scholarships and access health resources that they currently cannot access because of their limited English language skills. This will help doctors’ skills and training develop and allow the emerging healthcare system in Mongolia to enter the global healthcare community.
The Teaching Program
Our teaching program helps doctors with a limited grasp of the English language to start progressing toward a competent level of medical English. Fourth and fifth year medical students travel to Mongolia during their elective period; an 8 week period of study during the medical school curriculum dedicated to studying in a hospital of the students choice anywhere in the world.
While in country, medical students act as our student teachers, providing English lessons in exchange for medical education and clinical opportunities. Our student teachers may assist the doctors with applications that require English skills beyond their own to facilitate access to resources, provided that the doctors are learning English with a view of being competent themselves.
Our Teachers
In order to deliver a high quality English teaching program to Mongolian doctors, we are developing our own teaching material based upon continuous feedback from the doctors. The elective students are expected to help produce the material before and during their elective to teach according to our learning outcomes and continuous feedback, this is perfectly manageable but requires flexibility and motivation from our elective students. We will provide plenty of advice and support with regards to this.
The Bigger Picture
Our goals focus on helping doctors keep pace with 21st century medicine. English language skill isn’t the only barrier to healthcare development in Mongolia; there are other challenges to overcome.
Overall, the country is economically underdeveloped, which limits resources and the ability to provide quality medical services and coverage to the poor. The low socioeconomic status also makes it difficult for the country to solidify its healthcare infrastructure. These financial problems are long-term issues that Mongolian officials must address. Mongolia’s history is rich and uniquely centred around a nomadic way of life. As such Mongolia has very few centres of population and the people of Mongolia are spread far and wide, often-in very remote areas or moving in nomadic fashion. This understandably creates a significant barrier to providing accessible and equitable healthcare. One innovative way in which we are trying to overcome this is by utilising the good 3G networks with tablets.
Links and more info…
- http://www.ghjournal.org/health-care-in-mongolia/
- An excellent article about current healthcare challenges in Mongolia, as well as info on the healthcare systems origins and development.
- https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mg.html
- None other than the CIA’s factbook on Mongolia
- http://english.moh.mn/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=76&Itemid=110
- Mongolian ministry of health information
- http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/95131/E90671.pdf
- A healthcare system review by the WHO