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As a doctor working for Médecins Sans Frontières your clinical skills will be tested on a daily basis. The contexts in which you work may vary from: responding to a measles epidemic; to assessing medical needs after a natural disaster; to participating in a malaria treatment program that is also researching the level of drug resistance. While you may be challenged by the lack of diagnostic tools available to you – Médecins Sans Frontières will provide expert technical back up including extensive guidelines and protocols to ensure quality health care delivery. You will be treating diseases such as malaria, meningitis, typhoid and pneumonia. You may be required to perform minor surgical procedures. Your managerial and administration skills will be called upon as you supervise large teams of local staff. Your resourcefulness will be tested – often you will be the most senior doctor within the team. Public health issues will be a key component of your daily work life. This may involve participating in education campaigns and talking to community leaders about the use of bed nets to reduce the prevalence of malaria, or you may be responsible for negotiating access to drugs for the community you are serving. No matter where and what work you are involved in – you will have the opportunity to develop your professional capacities in ways in which you would not have imagined. Médecins Sans Frontières is interested in recruiting doctors with an all round clinical experience of at least 2 years post graduation. Hospital Residents and Registrars who are experienced/ specialising in obs/gynae, paediatrics, emergency and general medicine, infectious diseases, surgery and anaesthetics would be well suited to Médecins Sans Frontières' positions in its field programs. Tropical Medicine and Public Health training and /or experience ,and the broad area of expertise of General Practitioners is greatly appreciated by Medecins Sans Frontieres while experience in remote/rural settings is of particularly relevance to Medecins Sans Frontieres. A point of interest for doctors who are doing, or planning to do a post graduate medical specialty is the possibility of having time in the field accredited to your training course. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and the Royal Australian College of Physicians accredit time in the field in specific situations and under certain criteria. For more details on this contact the relevant college. STORIES FROM THE FIELD: Rowan Gilles, International President At just 33 Rowan became the youngest ever International President of MSF. In an interview with the British Medical Journal, he explains why taking 2 years out from his surgical career in Australia has been more than worth it... Read it here STORIES FROM THE FIELD: Catherine Hewison, GP Before going on my first mission with Médecins Sans Frontières I wouldn’t let myself imagine what it might be like, and, as I looked around me on this particular night, I smiled at the thought. How could I have imagined the woman giving birth surrounded by her noisy mother, sisters and aunties with the donkeys braying, the chickens clucking and the goats baaing in the background? We were staying in a two-room mud hut in north-western Afghanistan. Each morning I would wake to the sound of the donkey park and look across the grass to the clinic where upwards of 100 women in burqas would be waiting to be seen by myself and the Afghan doctor. We mostly saw women and children. I would pass along medical information and treatment techniques to the clinic nurses and the doctor and, in turn, they would lead me through this foreign world of Afghan culture and life. One night, with a lamp in one hand, medical box in the other, translator by my side and faithful sheep following behind (a gift from the local community which I think I was supposed to eat), I went off to help with a difficult delivery. As I was assisting my patient, someone came in and wiped coal on her face. Another woman followed and placed a sheepskin (freshly removed from its owner) around her shoulders. Not part of my usual treatment plan, but, at this point, I was happy to have any help on offer. Eventually, a healthy baby girl was delivered and I found myself under many layers of cloth between my patient’s legs delivering the placenta. I walked back under a crystal-clear star-filled sky. A good end to a hard day. You can’t imagine it. You can’t prepare for it. The job is not for everyone, but it is incredible, challenging, intense, frustrating, frightening, fulfilling ... and I love it. STORIES FROM THE FIELD: Nick Wood, PAEdIatrician The dark storm clouds on the horizon at dusk are typical of the wet season in Sudan. On this particular day, however, the wind which normally heralds the daily drenching of our compound abated – almost in reverence to Tik, the eight-year-old Dinka boy who was walking home with his stiff legged gait, leaning on his father and a stick. A simple leg wound had translated into three weeks of painful muscle spasms in the form of tetanus. After treatment with diazepam, antibiotics, and nutritional support, he was finally going home. But first he had to stop at a mud hut housing the EPI (Expanded Programme of Immunisation) for a tetnus toxoid vaccine. Tik is one of our success stories. In another of our mud huts in a remote area in civil war-torn southern Sudan, we run a therapeutic feeding centre. One of the most vulnerable groups in a developing country is children under five years of age. In the feeding centre, children who are acutely unwell are managed according to their weight-for-height index. With managed protocols and less medicine than you would think, they gain weight daily and their smiles return along with their health. Working as a paediatrician in isolated areas with Médecins Sans Frontières is very difficult but also extremely rewarding. The experience is about more than just acute paediatric medicine. The political, social and environmental contexts all have an impact out here in the bush. The rigors seen at the height of malarial parasitemia and the respiratory distress of acute pneumonia are just as vivid as the grimaces of the neonate with tetanus, yet each day we see such cases. We have some successes. We have some failures. But with the help of the local Sudanese staff and the backing of Médecins Sans Frontières, we are making a difference. ESSENTIAL CRITERIA ALSO DESIRABLE
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![Doctors [General]](/images/hdrs/v-doc.gif){kind=small}
Commitment to the
aims and values of Médecins Sans Frontières