Displaying items by tag: medical students

Some medical students need to work multiple part-time jobs to afford to complete their degrees. Final year students have stopped training because they don't have enough money to survive.

For that year, they get a bursary to live on (maximum £6,458). It is not enough - especially for those from low-income backgrounds. They are campaigning for better NHS bursaries. Penny Sucharitkul hopes to be a vascular surgeon, but the money does not even cover her rent. She is from a single-parent family, and relying on Universal Credit after her father lost his job during the pandemic. On top of studying full-time, she works as a martial arts instructor and a clinical research assistant. She says working-class students are treated unfairly. ‘We're getting up at 6 am, training all day, then going to work again. It’s incredibly taxing on our mental health. We're burning people out before they've even started in the NHS.’

Christian missionaries in Russia have been referred to as ‘volunteers’ since 2016 after a law was passed that limits religious proselytising. Ukraine has become a launching pad for missionaries to Russia, where there is little or no religious freedom. A Ukrainian missionary wrote recently, ‘Our church has formed a team to help with the different aspects of receiving refugees, among other related activities. On 1 March I went to a military installation in Chișinău, where refugee Indian medical students from Odessa were sheltering. Some students were thankful to see a pastor and pray with him. They have studied medicine in Odessa for six years, and had just two months to complete graduation when the war came and they had to leave. They want the war to end soon, and they can return to Ukraine to complete their studies.’