ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates on few main challenges or limitations with such international health programmes, as highlighted in the explorations of host perceptions. The study of benefits, harms and ethical implications identified "three main narratives that shaped participant perceptions of visits: culture, context, and concern, expectations, intentions, and miscommunications, and partnership and the desire to share and gain knowledge". Students might judge institutional or social practices in a host community as inferior, or report these upon their return as based in "culture", a common shorthand these days for "beyond logic". While reflection on international medical electives among students and faculty from the Global North may be growing, the literature on host perspectives of high income country (HIC) international elective students is sparse but merits more space in considerations of what and how international medical electives work.
