Home   Student Electives   Preparing your Elective   Preparing for your Nursing/Midwifery Elective Overseas

As soon as possible! Some of the more popular locations get booked up a year or two in advance!

With most organisations you need to be planning your elective at the very least 9 months to a year in advance, and preferably as much as eighteen months in advance if possible. Once you have received the go-ahead to join a specific hospital / project it can seem like you have ages to get things sorted…. Not true!!!

Write to several organisations, hospitals or clinics that interest you, telling them about yourself, your beliefs and Christian activities and spell out your expectations of the elective. Make clear whether the dates of your elective are flexible and can be varied within limits or are fixed and immovable.

Correspondence can take several weeks, if not months, due both to delays in the post and the fact that your elective enquiry is not necessarily going to be a priority concern to an overworked under-resourced mission administrator and he/she may not reply immediately.