Medical/Healthcare Projects

Project at a Glance Location: Kasoa, Accra, Kumasi, Hohoe Start point: Accra End Point: Accra Duration: 2-12 weeks Hours: 30-40 hours per week Food: Local food (3 times a day) Room: Host family or hostel Date: First and Third Monday of each month

Project Summary

IFRE’s Ghana Volunteer Health projects aim to increase access to basic healthcare for rural people, decrease the prevalence of endemic disease and improve overall village health by providing public health projects and promoting health education in the villages. Volunteers will assist the local nurses at the District Hospital with all aspects of clinical nursing and act as a primary health worker with the community nurses. Volunteer duties may include working in the consultation rooms, medicine dispensary or operating theatre (operating room). Duties consist of helping with physical therapy, treatment of minor injuries, maternal assistance and childcare. Other occasional tasks may be assisting midwives on home-visits, verifying or recording patient's personal/medical information.

Skills/Qualifications Needed

Volunteers who are interested in joining our volunteer health program must possess health care certification, such as a medical student ID, EMT or paramedic certification, or nurse or physician's credentials. We do not permit volunteers without medical credentials to work in this program due to the potential risk. The hospitals require a copy of your resume, clearly documenting credentials and education, before your arrival to the project. Projects will also require an official copy of your credentials.

Volunteer Responsibilities

A volunteer's role can range from observational to basic assistance, dependent on education, skills, experience and qualifications and also on the community’s current needs. Volunteers are not permitted to perform major exams or surgeries. You will work with a doctor or nurse, spending time in various departments of a busy hospital. Departments you might support include Gynecology, Neurology, Orthopedics, Obstetrics, Pediatrics and Surgery. Volunteers may change bandages, take blood pressure and contribute to education efforts regarding about basic disease prevention. An important element to these volunteer placements in Ghana is learning about and being comfortable with a different culture’s healthcare practices.

Room/Food/Supervision

IFRE manages living accommodations, provides meals and supervision for volunteers for the entirety of their stay in Ghana. We offer a “home base” in Ghana. Our home base is about an hour drive from Accra. We try to create a “home away from home” for volunteers staying at our home base. It is a perfect situation for volunteers to live safely and comfortably while making many new friends and sharing experience every day. Most of volunteers project in Ghana are located within 1-20 KM of our home base so you may walk or ride a local bus to your project. In the evening when you return to home base, you can relax, eat dinner, explore local areas or simply share experience with volunteer comrades.

Occasionally if a project is located far from the IFRE home base or when our home base is fully occupied with volunteers, we will place volunteers with host families. Our host families are carefully screened, socially respected and experienced with hosting international volunteers. Wherever you stay, your accommodation with IFRE is safe, clean and comfortable. In most cases, you will share a room with volunteers (of same gender). In Ghana, our field staff is an experienced team comprising of country coordinators, assistant coordinators, managers, cooks and field assistants. Our field staff visits volunteers regularly and always happy to help our volunteers in any way needed. We offer 3 meals a day of local cuisine. Typically, volunteers eat breakfast and dinner at the home base (or host family) and have lunch at their project. We offer fresh, nutritious and safe local foods to our volunteers to eat. We also work extremely hard to maintain our facilities in a positive condition.