Soon after finishing my last required rotation for medical school, I boarded a plane to spend five weeks at Baptist Medical Centre in Nalerigu, Northern Ghana on an international rotation/medical mission. These five weeks were truly eye-opening as I learned more about myself, medicine, and the needs of the region.
These lessons were not learned without difficulty—indeed, many of them were learned through difficult situations. As students, we quickly learned the importance of prioritizing what information we needed to learn through a history, as conversation through a translator or even a series of translators quickly made communication convoluted, confusing, and time-consuming. And we only began to learn, by sifting through the many daily requests for food, money, gifts, assistance, etc., what the most dire needs were in this area—security, education, a way out of poverty.
The poverty of the area was an enormous problem underlying every other problem that came afterward. Though many in the area could get by all right on a daily basis, it didn’t take much—one illness, one clinic bill, the mandatory rest after a surgery—to threaten what little security their lives had. As individuals, we had neither the power or the position to change the poverty of the patient in front of us, but we all did what we could to work within those limits to improve their health—by offering them solutions to avoid simple medical problems completely, often through education. Most patients here have a very high respect for physicians and as such do not question us often; however, I found most people very willing and appreciative of knowledge—why are they getting sick? How can they prevent it? They gratefully received any knowledge that empowered them to take charge of their own health to some extent. The nurses and other staff at the hospital were similarly eager to learn, with a hunger and receptiveness that I seldom see in Americans of the same age.
They taught us much about culture and language and social issues of the area while we were at the hospital, and in return we taught them what we could of medical concepts that could easily be applied in that setting.
Though I have certainly improved in medical knowledge from this experience, what I consider the most important lessons have to do with being a doctor rather than a clinician. I have learned the importance and necessity of clear, simple communication in the success of giving care to a patient. And as I discussed already, I have learned that education has a lasting power that can both improve health and offer empowerment. In this way we can offer care and help as Jesus did, both compassionate and cognizant of a human’s inherent dignity.
While I doubt that my relatively short time made a large difference in the larger scheme of the region’s health, I am still satisfied with the results of the time I spent. Aware of my limitations as an individual, I am happy with the thought that individual patients, and potentially their families as well, have had their health improved—briefly through their time at BMC, and I hope over the longer term as well through the impact of education.
And I know that this experience will stay with me for years to come, influencing my perspectives and priorities as I continue to practice as well as helping me to live in a way that is more conscious of the poverty that can exist on the other side of the globe or even the other side of town.
Posted on
Thu, May 26, 2011
by Chen