Long-term trends in international medical electives fees: a database mining study

Abstract

Background: Abroad medical electives are recognized as high-impact practice and considered a necessity to provide global health training. As of recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and its related travel restrictions prohibited most international elective activities. Another important barrier to abroad electives that received comparably little attention is elective and application fees, which – combined – may be as high as $5000 per month, and may prevent students with limited financial resources from applying for an international elective. Elective fees have never been systematically analyzed and trends in teaching and application fees have rarely been subject to dedicated scientific investigations. Methods: Using data from two large elective reports databases, the authors addressed this gap in the literature. The authors analyzed trends in abroad elective fees within the last 15 years in some of the most popular Anglo-American elective destinations among students from Germany, including the United States of America, Australia, New Zealand, the Republic of South Africa, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Results: The authors identified n = 726 overseas elective reports that were uploaded between 2006 and 2020, of which n = 438 testimonies met the inclusion criteria. The United Kingdom and Australia were the most popular elective destinations (n = 123 and n = 113, respectively), followed by the Republic of South Africa (n = 104) and the United States of America (n = 44). Elective fees differed substantially—depending on the elective destinations and time point. Median elective fees were highest in the United States of America (€ 1875 for a 4-week elective between 2018–2020), followed by the Republic of South Africa (€ 400) and Australia (€ 378). The data also suggests an increasing trend for elective fees, particularly in the United States. Conclusions: Rising fees warrant consideration and a discussion about the feasibility of reciprocity and the bidirectional flow of students in bidirectional exchange programs.