You are in Burma teaching Helping Babies Breathe – a newborn resuscitation curriculum for resource-limited settings. Your venue is a Burmese national hospital with an assembly of excited nurses and midwives. But your presentation is suddenly interrupted by an urgent call from the postpartum floor: “We have a baby who is not breathing.” […]
What makes for effective medical education? In the clinical setting we often speak of, “See one. Do one. Teach one.” It’s learning via role modeling, active participation, and skill transfer. Enter the INMED International Medicine and Public Health Hybrid Courses… Just days ago we concluded the fifth round of these courses. Hours of lectures? Worse
It is human nature to step up to a challenge. What challenge will you choose? It is also human nature to defend. Whom will you defend? Most all of us in healthcare have dreamed of doing something bold. Why don’t we follow through? Here’s the reasons I hear most often: “I don’t know
“Theirs is unbearable pain: mothers and fathers recounting their helplessness to alleviate the hunger of their children – hunger often compounded by the rigors of malaria, breathlessness of pneumonia, and lethargy of prolonged malnutrition. I scramble to offer assistance, but there is no end to their need. The difficulty is knowing how to help
Like any number of us who oversee organizations, businesses or institutions, I grapple constantly with dreams and demands that far exceed my capacity to fulfill or to manage. And like many of my colleagues, I find some reassurance in regularly remembering just what is my role as CEO. In one phrase, the INMED
Well-meaning people continually inquire about the terminology associated with global health. Their inquiry is not just hair-splitting. Terminology may be subtlety different, and yet the meanings conveyed be profoundly divergent. And so consider these terms: global health, international health, international public health, and international medicine. In common usage, global health and international health
Marek Banas, a medical student at Lincoln Memorial University, just returned from her INMED service-learning experience at The Surgery, a general practice clinic in Kampala, capital of Uganda. I find her account one of the most compelling I have ever read. “The Surgery is potentially the best clinic in Uganda,” she writes. “People
Rapid-fire rifle shots grew closer, echoing from each direction. The cadence of explosions increased, accompanied by shouting just outside in the streets. Inside Dr. Steve Foster, keynote speaker at the 2012 INMED Exploring Medical Missions Conference, and his colleague Darrel Hockersmith barred the metal door and grappled in the darkness for protection from flying
The Joplin Tornado of May, 2011 on caught many of us well-intentioned but unprepared to respond effectively. I, for one, felt a deep sense of pain over the catastrophe unfolding just 100 miles a way. But I also realized frustration that at such late notice there was little I could do to assist.
Today’s citizenry and healthcare profession students are more keenly aware of the needs of marginalized people. I’ve noticed how educational institutions are rapidly developing curriculum and field experiences to match community and student expectations. As a result of such demand, however, health educators are grappling with how to best provide effective, relevant international healthcare