Podcast

Management of Common Surgical Conditions in Africa and the Middle East

As Christian healthcare professionals, many of us will consider the option of using our training overseas to serve underprivileged populations. Even if we are willing to go, there are many barriers we face that may seem insurmountable and discourage us from pursuing this type of mission work, especially when we are just starting out in our profession. For professionals in allied health, there are even fewer resources and opportunities available to us than what medical professionals have. In this presentation, we will explore modern-day concerns for entering the medical mission field, opportunities available to allied healthcare professionals, and what an overseas therapy practice can look like: all filtered through the lens of an occupational therapist's recent, real-life experiences serving abroad.

In the past, malaria killed two out of three missionaries in certain locales. Depending on the prevalence of disease, the missionary must decide on how many layers of protection are needed. Strategies include sleeping under an insecticide-treated net, avoiding outside at dawn and dusk, screening windows and doors, wearing mosquito repellent, reducing mosquito breeding sites, taking malaria prophylactic medication, and evaluating and treating every fever within 24 hours of onset. The decision about which strategies to employ should be made in consultation with medical providers with knowledge of local patterns of disease. Diagnosis may be affected by presence of prophylactic medications, test kits that only detect certain species, or variable experience of lab personnel. Recurrent malaria may be due to reinfection, recrudesence, or relapse, and diagnosis and treatment requires knowledge of disease patterns related to P. vivax and P. ovale. Testing will often be negative and disease may occur weeks to years after leaving the malarious area, making treatment more difficult, especially if the missionary is back in his/her passport country.

As we see an increasing number of culturally diverse patients in our practices, there is no doubt of the importance of cultural competency in medicine. Specific circumstances and miscommunications have been well documented. But how can we develop an eye to see where a patient’s values and worldview may differ from our own? We will review an approach to cultural competency highlighted by medical missions case studies.

We will address the challenges and advantages of being single on the mission field.