Humanitarian Medicine Course
Intensive 4-day training in humanitarian and disaster medicine, equipping you with life-saving skills to make a difference worldwide.
Humanitarian medicine is practised in complex, resource-limited environments where systems are disrupted, needs are high, and decisions carry real consequences.
This four-day Humanitarian Medicine course focuses on the clinical, public health, and operational realities of working in humanitarian and disaster settings. You’ll explore how healthcare is delivered in conflict zones, disaster responses, displaced populations, and fragile health systems, where standard clinical pathways often don’t apply.
Through expert-led teaching grounded in real deployments, you’ll develop the knowledge, judgement, and contextual awareness needed to adapt your practice, work safely within humanitarian structures, and contribute effectively as part of a wider response.
The principles covered on this course are directly applicable to global health work, humanitarian deployments, and emergency care in underserved or high-pressure environments, both internationally and closer to home.
Humanitarian Medicine Course
Course Content
Foundations of Humanitarian Medicine
You’ll begin by grounding your understanding of how humanitarian healthcare operates in crisis and disaster settings. Teaching introduces core humanitarian principles, coordination systems, and standards of care, alongside the realities of delivering medicine where infrastructure, resources, and security may be compromised. This section sets the shared framework for the course, ensuring everyone understands how clinical care fits into wider humanitarian response systems.
Adapting Clinical Practice in Resource-Limited Settings
This section focuses on how everyday clinical decision-making changes in humanitarian contexts. Teaching explores adapting assessment, treatment, and prioritisation when diagnostics, medications, and referral pathways are limited or disrupted. Through real case examples, you’ll examine how clinicians balance individual patient care with population-level needs, often under pressure and uncertainty.
Your Teaching Faculty
Hareen De Silva
Rebecca Marcussen-Lewis
Zoe Clift
Corfe, UK
What's Included?
Expert Faculty Teaching
A lecture-led programme delivered by experienced humanitarian and disaster clinicians, designed to give you a grounded, realistic understanding of how humanitarian healthcare works in practice.
Workshops, Group Learning, Case Discussions
Interactive teaching throughout the course, including facilitated discussions and small-group work to help you apply frameworks and sharpen clinical and operational judgement.
Accommodation and Meals Included
Your course fee includes accommodation and meals for the duration of the programme, so you can stay on-site, focus fully, and get the most out of the experience.
CPD Hours and Course Certification
This course has been awarded 23 CPD hours by RCSEd. On completion, you’ll receive a certificate of attendance recognising your training in humanitarian and disaster medicine.
Resources
This course is designed for healthcare professionals and students who want to understand and apply humanitarian and disaster medicine principles in real-world settings. It’s well suited to those exploring humanitarian deployments, global health work, disaster response, or anyone who wants to strengthen their ability to deliver care in disrupted, resource-limited environments.
You don’t need previous humanitarian experience, just curiosity, professionalism, and a willingness to engage with complex decision-making.
