Tanya Gupta, Final Year Medical Student, March 2019

​My experience of JSS Health Centre, Bilaspur, India
-Tanya Gupta
Kings  College London-GKT Sc​hool of Medical Education

My time at JSS opened my eyes both to the difficulties of healthcare provision ......

​My time at JSS opened my eyes both to the difficulties of healthcare provision in the rural setting with finite resources and also, the ingenuity and development that can be fostered in consequence.
 
With tribal villagers travelling in from hundreds of kilometres to access JSS’s healthcare I was reminded of the sheer privilege British citizens enjoy of having access to universally free healthcare practically at their doorstep. Efficiency was fundamental to the day-to-day practice of medicine at JSS to overcome the heavy workload, where it was usual for doctors to see up to 40 patients a day in clinic. I was made sensible of the comparatively unlimited resources us medical practitioners enjoy within the NHS, such as being able to order investigations relatively freely, having large teams to share vast workloads, as well as simply being able to use a pair of gloves without a second thought!
 
The team were incredibly welcoming and I was able to experience a huge breadth of surgeries, many which form the bread and butter of daily practice. I was invited to assist in theatres on operations such as cholecystectomies, hernia repairs and cyst removals in both the adult and paediatric populations. With the OBGYN team I was allowed to assist in hysterectomies, D&Cs, tubal ligations and caesarean sections. I was able to learn and practice different suturing techniques, the principles of opening and closing surgical incisions as well as recognising key anatomical structures during the operations. This was a hugely valuable learning experience for me and I hope to further these skills during my surgical placements in my foundation years.