Are you a Registered Nurse currently working in an acute nursing setting who is committed to ongoing education and wants to share their skills with nursing colleagues working in low-resource setting?

Applications for nurses interested in joining the 2018 SWB Nursing Team are now open.

Information about who we are looking for and what is involved can be found here

The program will take place from August 27th-September 7th in 3 locations across Malawi and Zimbabwe.

Departure from Australia will be on Saturday 25th, 2018.

SWB volunteers cover their own travel and accommodation expenses.

The SWB are preparing for another amazing trip to Malawi and Zimbabwe, where our team of educators will deliver programs for hundreds of participants including surgical trainees, clinical officers, medical and clinical officer students and nurses.

Recruitment for specialist consultants is well underway, with this year’s team looking pretty fantastic so far.

We have just opened applications for Junior Doctors and Medical Students who are up for a rewarding and challenging experience.

Junior Doctors can send through their CV along with a 250 word explanation of why they want to join the team to info@specialistswithoutborders.org

SSSM has been donating the proceeds of their Charity Calendar to SWB for a number of years.
Each calendar has featured Melbourne Health consultants who appreciate the value of a good sense of humour. This year, the calendar featured consultants recreating famous works of art, including SWB’s Kate Drummond and Brad Hockey.

Thank you to SSSM for their ongoing support, which is vital for the running of our medical education programs. We can’t wait to see what they have planned for 2018!

SWB are looking for exceptional medical students with a passion for global health and sustainable development to join our team.

SWB’s Medical Education programs will be conducted in Malawi and Zimbabwe, with the team leaving Australia on August 27th and the last day of teaching taking place on September 8th.

Medical student who join our team are vital to the smooth running of our programs, contributing through coordination of registrations, assisting the team with small group, workshop-style teaching and ensuring accurate program evaluation. Additionally, medical students get to learn from our experienced teachers and gain insight into health care delivery in a setting very different to Australia.

A huge thank you to the Flinders University Surgical Society (FUSS) to holding a Charity Cocktail Night to raise funds for SWB. SWB’s Paul Anderson spoke at the event, sharing the amazing story of how he founded SWB and what it means to contribute to sustainable development. A special thank you goes to Charlotte Velik, Community Director at FUSS, for letting SWB be apart of such a wonderful event!
Without the support of organisations like FUSS we wouldn’t be able to what we do.

SWB were recently the grateful recipient of a donation from the MD Conference recently held in Melbourne.

SWB founder and chairman Dr Paul Anderson spoke at the conference and was joined on stage by his son Jordan for an informative and entertaining session titled ‘Breaking Boundaries: The Story Behind Specialists Without Borders’.

Dr Paul Anderson with his son Jordan Anderson on stage at the MD Conference.

Photo credit: 2016 MD Conference

Here at SWB we get lots of questions about who attends our programs. We thought it was time to give you an in depth look at some of our program participants. The following interview was conducted last month when the team was in Blantyre, Malawi.

Munashe and Daisy are final year medical students at the University of Malawi and completing their surgical rotation at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre. On their final day of SWB’s four-day seminar I sat down with this pair of wonderful students to find out about their motivations, fears and plans for the future.

I was afforded the wonderful opportunity to undertake the teaching tour of Malawi (Blantyre) and Zimbabwe (Harare) in 2016. When the call went out for Paediatric Surgery and Orthopaedics, I wondered both why I had been contacted and what I could potentially offer. Modern surgical care is as much about updating procedures and developing intricate new techniques as it is about preparing complex patients for surgery and managing their “medical” needs post operatively. In this vein I was invited to support teaching on areas such as peri-operative fluid management, pre-operative preparation, particularly with regard to hypertension management and renal care around surgery. The opportunity to teach in my area of expertise in preeclampsia (hypertension in pregnancy) was also afforded.

SWB has rectently received a generous donation from SSSM, who donated the proceeds of their annual charity calendar. SSSM’s 2016 charity calendar featured Royal Melbourne Hospital consultants dressed as their super hero alter egos.

Thank you to everyone at SSSM for this valuable contribution to SWB, we are so grateful for your support!

SSSM’s James May and SWB’s Kate Drummond and Georgia Ramsay