Despite this climate of international interest, most of my class will stay in Canada. There is a physician shortage here, especially in Rural Family Practice, and some aspects of our program are obviously meant to groom us to practice in this field.

It is possible to combine domestic (Canadian) practice with overseas work. As a medical student with free summers, I actually have much more flexibility than a salaried physician or one who runs their own clinic. The problem is, I have less time and experience to share.

It’s been difficult to find an organization that has a sustainable program of care in a developing country, minimal operational costs (maximal transfer of funding to patient care), and still attempts to uphold the ethics that apply to cross-cultural care. I will be a member of medical trek to the Himalayas that encompasses most of these points, but it is only a start. We will deliver drugs, patient care and education, and learn a lot from the experience. The work I’ll be directly involved with, the physical and mental preparation for which I am documenting on my blog, will only touch about 1300 of those 1.3 billion people without access to care. It still counts.

By no means are these trips a long-term solution. I think in the long term, such initiatives need to focus on the idea of “train the trainer.” This buzzphrase is found with increasingly prevalence in groups interested in global healthcare and education; it means that rather than having an initiative disappear when the foreigners go back home, we should educate those who are part of the local infrastructure to take over a program and make it their own.

However, in the interim, they may help to bridge the gap between the current lack of physicians and the long-term goal of attracting them / retaining them in the areas of most need. I imagine that a program of incentives – especially in Africa – may be part of the answer.

Cheers,

Jessica