Interview with Abdul Ibrahim
We caught up with Abdul Ibrahim, a diabetes MSc student from the Fiji Islands to find out about his experiences of the course so far.
Tell us a bit about your background
My name is Abdul and I am a GP and Emergency Medicine Registrar in the Fiji Islands. Back home, most of my time is split between emergency work and general practice. Close to 30% of the population across the Fiji Islands are diabetic and I was seeing more and more diabetic patients in my clinics.
Why did you choose to study at Warwick?
There are a few reasons why I chose to study at Warwick. Namely, I was impressed that Warwick is one of the top ten universities in the UK and is one of the top 100 worldwide.
In terms of diabetes, the course leads are people who are very highly educated. They have a vast number of qualifications and have published extensive lists of research work. To me, they seemed like people who are at the top of their game and I knew I would definitely benefit from their tuition.
Also, another good thing for me is that Warwick is located in the centre of England. In addition to my studies, I also wanted the opportunity to travel all around the UK whilst I was here and I’ve been able to do that as the University of Warwick is well connected and it has been easy to travel.
Why did you choose to study the course you chose? What were you hoping to get out of it?
Where I come from, we are stagnated in terms of management of diabetes care so I wanted to get new ideas of what is happening in the world of diabetes. I did my research and this course came out as the best for me to get up to date with the knowledge and evidence that is out there. Also, we don’t have diabetic consultants in my country like you do in the UK and so as there are no diabetic specialists, I wanted the opportunity to specialise in diabetes. I am hopeful that my knowledge will provide a stronger platform to advocate for diabetes, the challenges patients and health professionals face and the management needed.
My diabetes tutors are coming up with innovative ways of tackling and managing diabetes in their settings. Coming from a developing nation, I was hoping to experience and see how diabetes management and its complications were managed here and apply this in my own country.
What were the most enjoyable and/or useful aspects?
In addition to the lecturers being highly-qualified, they are also really down to earth. They were wonderful in getting the ideas across to students. Diabetes is a broad subject; the benefits of this course is that the subject matter can be broken down into small pieces and tutors delivered exactly what we needed to know from clinical and operational perspective.
I have a better understanding of diabetes as a whole and the course has exposed to me a lot of different programmes and methods of dealing with diabetes that I can apply back in my country.
In addition to study, the University of Warwick is beautiful – I hear it’s more beautiful in the summer so I hope to see this! The facilities are also of a very good standard, the library and IT services are some of the best ever used. There are also a lot of student programme and support services available. Coming from another country to a whole new country there is a lot of help available should we ever need it, which is great.
Would you recommend your course?
I would definitely recommend the course to anyone who has an interest in diabetes. Really, everyone should have awareness of diabetes and have an interest in the condition as it continues to grow.
