Table 3 Case Studies

Case study 1

Learning experience: Observing clinical practice in a context where diagnostic technologies are not available "It’s easy to just rely on a machine…… but there’s ways to improve on your practice. Go back to basics… Look at your patient. Touch your patient, talk to your patient”.

Transfer to NHS: “When I came back to the UK …I wouldn’t reach for a machine, I would talk to the patient a lot, lot more. I would do a manual pulse rather than a machine pulse. I’ll say (to students) have you done the manual pulse? And they look at me like I’m crazy but …when you talk to them about the whys and all of that. You can pass on the knowledge that way.”

Case study 2

Learning experience: Observing a Somali student in a full burkha and concluding that “that person is really strict or somebody’s making them dress like that….then the student whipped it off and said I couldn’t be bothered to put any make up on today so I thought I’d wear my burkha.”

Transfer to NHS: Using it in teaching. It is “good example of…you can make presumptions very easily, even if you think you are being kind or you think you are being open and then [I] use it as a very good example of just how similar people are the world over.”

Case study 3

Learning experience: Observing time keeping of staff in Somali Hospitals

Transfer to NHS: “Large proportion of staff [in Kings College Hospital] are from Africa or the Caribbean. And it [the trip to Somaliland] made a big difference as to how I relate to the staff. I would ask for something and they wouldn't bring it straight away and I wouldn’t take it personally, because that’s part of their culture.”

Case study 4

Learning experience: Working with Somali patients

Transfer to NHS: “Well it makes you more reflective in dealing with people from different cultures, with the Somali population it means you can immediately understand them so much more that before and so if, for example, there was a Somali patient in the hospital I’ll be asked to see them. Somali expert! Also, thinking about working with families, because in Somaliland there’s no such thing as the patient, it’s the patient and the family. So in the NHS, I always think that. It’s made me much more aware of carers and their role. And how it’s the patient and the carer. It perhaps, hasn’t helped me in terms of understanding people from other, like Sikh people or Hindu people or whatever. But the general framework of a cultural framework. It does make you reflect on those things and that does effect you in your day to things all the time.”