Is it possible to do true academic style residency training at mission hospitals in developing countries? Does the lack of resources and scarcity of mentors result in inferior training and therefore inadequately trained graduates? What governmental or regulatory bodies are involved in non-university based training programs in the developing world? Do short term visiting faculty really make a difference? How can spiritual discipleship be woven into medical and surgical residency training? During this breakout session, Dr. Carol Spears (missionary surgeon and Assistant Program Director at Tenwek Hospital in Kenya) and Dr. Agneta Odera (Kenyan physician in her third year of General Surgery Residency Training at Tenwek) will share their experiences in starting and developing a General Surgery Training Program in partnership with the Pan African Academy of Christian Surgeons. They will share their own stories of challenges, mistakes, areas of ongoing deficiency, as well as helpful hints, blessings, and personal stories. The goal of this session is to provide a minimal set of requirements needed for a successful residency training program and to provide information on resources available to assist new programs. The approach of training others to then go and train others models the example Jesus established in his ministry on earth.
HIV/AIDS remains a tremendous challenge with medical, emotional, economic and social problems. Using case presentations and an interactive format, this workshop will explore HIV/AIDS care and treatment issues particularly from the speaker’s experience in Africa
This session will overview WHO/UNICEF child health Standards as they apply to both short and long-term health missions. We will look at some of the relevant literature and review health indicators to be assessed in both long and short term health missions. We will also look at how to use the data collected from the use of relevant indicators to establish community disease and malnutrition prevalence and specific community health programming targets.
This session will review case presentations that demonstrate the potential for harm associated with healthcare missions. We will look at methods by which such problems can be avoided. The potential for harm related to short-term medical missions does exist, and in a much more real way than most of us care to acknowledge. It is only through the careful examination of such problems can we develop health mission strategies that mitigate harm, and improve community health.
