Archive for the ‘global surgery’ Tag

Training medical students through international electives   Leave a comment

A number of recent academic studies have shown that global health experiences are becoming more essential in the eyes of medical trainees. One particular study suggested that the vast majority of current surgical residents are interested in global health experiences. Our research group at Emory has further shown that medical students are likely considering global health offerings when students evaluate residency programs. The reality for residency programs today is that failing to offer opportunities in global health may be harming their ability to recruit the best applicants for their program. However, medical schools and residency programs alike have had difficulty overcoming the logistical difficulties while also maintaining the quality of medical education provided during such experiences.

Medishare_ultrasound

Drs. Jahnavi Srinivasan and Viraj Master demonstrate point-of-care ultrasound techniques to medical students Lee Hugar and Pete Creighton during Emory Medishare’s surgical camp in Hinche, Haiti.

For the last five years, I have worked intimately with a small group of faculty and students at Emory University School of Medicine to design a for-credit international surgery elective that attempts to demonstrate the feasibility of such a training experience for medical student. A long-form retrospective piece on the effort and how it has evolved to meet the needs of multiple stakeholders has just been published in the Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons. The key takeaway from our group’s experience is that the common criticisms of these short-term trips fail to wholly encompass the range of benefits being provided. If one assesses solely the educational value or exclusively the burden disease effect for the patient population, a perspective that incorporates the cumulative benefit of these programs is lost.

As I have started the transition from medical student to general surgery residency, it has become increasingly important for me to find a way to communicate our message to the next generation of medical students. At Emory, I have no doubt that an exceptional class of rising senior medical students with global health experiences will have no problem continuing to build on the model there. But what can be done for other medical schools that don’t have such a program or have not operationalized it in a manner that can continue across multiple years? After considerable thought and planning, we have released an early version of a website, www.MedStudentTrips.org, that will serve as a repository of public clinical manuals, planning documents, and advice for those looking to replicate the Emory Medishare model at their own school. In passing on such knowledge, I hope to catalyze such efforts at other institutions in the future.

For information on Emory Medishare, the student-faculty medical humanitarian collaborative discussed in this article at http://www.emorymedishare.org.

For those looking to design such a program at their own medical institution, Emory Medishare has posted many of its public resources at http://www.MedStudentTrips.org.

 

Posted March 15, 2013 by Ira Leeds in Global Health, Medical Education, Surgery

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Global Health’s Latest Offspring: “Global Surgery”   1 comment

Outside Hôpital St. Thérèse, Hinche, Haiti

Outside Hôpital St. Thérèse (Hinche, Haiti)

“Global surgery” is a relatively new addition to its parent field of global health. Although the notion of surgeons from the industrialized world sharing skills and equipment with resource-scarce environments has been around for decades (largely arising out of the medical operations of the world powers’ militaries), “global surgery” as an academic interest within traditional global health circles has emerged only recently. The increasing interest in the global burden of surgical disease has largely paralleled the relatively new awareness of noncommunicable disease as a global problem.

I should be clear that a consensus has only just begun to form in the last 10 years around the broadening of the definition of global health. For example, although there is an increasing effort to use “global health” in a more appropriate, literal sense, many well-qualified academics still associate the term with the unique disease burden of low- and middle-income countries. Say “global health” in a professional healthcare setting and poor, non-white people suffering from malaria or HIV is what the majority of the audience will be envisioning. It is only recently that the more complex problems of noncommunicable diseases like diabetes and cancer that span the industrialized and developing world have been authentically engaged by the global health community.

Inside Hôpital St. Thérèse

Inside Hôpital St. Thérèse (Hinche, Haiti)

Within global surgery, I am most interested in the persistent difficulty we have of finding the means of providing even the most basic surgical care for all the world’s communities. Although it will be decades before the poorest countries will have the means of performing complex surgeries like spinal fusions or coronary artery bypasses, the infrastructure and skills necessary to perform hernia repairs and thyroidectomies is well within reach. These latter cases may be less “newsworthy” but they represent substantial quality-of-life improvements for patients suffering from surgically-correctable disease. Although the field of global surgery is still in its nascent stages, a number of expert bodies are catalyzing around the idea of essential surgical care (e.g., ASAP Today, WHO GIEESC) and how best to deliver it.

A note on the pictures: The pictures in this post include two from a humanitarian surgical mission I joined in June 2009. This was the first of a series of many missions (more in a later blog post). I inserted these two images here to demonstrate how even the limited infrastructure of Hôpital St. Thérèse (see “outside” photo) can provide the platform for delivering basic surgical care (see “inside” photo). The bottom picture is provided courtesy of Nick Vittone of AtlantaAperature.com.

Posted March 1, 2012 by Ira Leeds in Global Health, Introductory Material (For newcomers), Surgery

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