Resources for students, residents, and healthcare professionals who want to learn more about healthcare missions. Includes sessions from the Global Missions Health Conference.
Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) face significant challenges to their health and well-being that are unique due to lack of necessary resources including food, water, sanitation, shelter, security, and healthcare. Caring for people in these situations requires an understanding of their unique needs as well as having realistic goals regarding what can and cannot be done for them. Our experiences in providing healthcare for the victims of disasters in Congo, Indonesia, Pakistan, Myramar, Afghanistan, Honduras, Nepal, Kurdistan, and Turkey – both natural and manmade – highlight the need to be well prepared when serving in these difficult situations. We are called to serve “the least of these,” and the victims of disasters and crises certainly qualify. Often these events, though causing much hardship and suffering, create the possibility for doors and hearts to be open to the message of Jesus that otherwise would be closed. We must be both willing and well prepared if we are to serve well when we are called to respond to those in need.
According to the WHO, in the African Region, about 473 000 children die from pneumonia, 300 000 from diarrhea, and a further 443 000 from malaria every year. Mortality in hospitalized cases of severe pediatric malaria is 9%-10%. Many efforts to prevention infection and improve nutrition so as to modulate the impact of infection are in place but when critically ill children present, correctly preparing staff and systems to prioritize effective care can make the difference. This session will discuss why children die from malaria, reading the signs and practical prioritization of care to reduce morbidity and mortality.
There is a shift happening in missions, what is God up to and what is my role? https://bit.ly/gmhc2022_charlievittitow_whatismyplace
In both domestic and international situations, dental needs often go unmet (for multiple reasons). Many people in poverty develop a "survivalist" mindset and only seek care when in pain. Untreated dental conditions, if neglected long enough, can turn into dental emergencies. When many patients do finally seek dental care, it is often in an emergency medical setting where dentistry is not usually available. In some parts of the world, dental care may be non-existent altogether. These emergency dental patients are often mis-diagnosed and/or go untreated in a medical setting. This lecture will serve to enlighten/empower non-dentists with some basic diagnostic and treatment skills to better manage dental emergencies in a non-dental setting. https://bit.ly/gmhc2022_jonathanspenn_emergencydentaldiagnosis
We will learn how moral injury is inevitable in cross-cultural healthcare, and we will learn how to prevent and manage moral injury through proven, God-honoring methods. Presentation slides: https://bit.ly/gmhc2022_jimritchie_protectyourselffrom
As we see an increasing number of culturally diverse patients in our US-based practices or on the mission field, our understanding of cultural influences in healthcare and our own biases is essential. 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 humility highlighted by medical missions case studies. Presentation Slides: https://bit.ly/gmhc2022_davidnarita_culturalhumility
Hand gestures? Gaps in knowledge? Use of humor? Feeling quite alone. These are just some of the questions and one of the challenges a health care educator can experience when teaching in a low-resource country or setting. This presentation is designed to first walk you through considerations one should explore when designing an international body of work. Then the speaker will guide you through the real-life ups and downs and thrills of teaching nursing in a classroom setting in rural Cambodia, complete with farm animals ambling into the classroom! The information presented can be utilized by all health care professionals as they explore the adventure and satisfaction of teaching in an international classroom setting. Presentation Slides: https://bit.ly/gmhc2022_karenreed_challengeslivedasanurse
Like the prophet Elijah in the Old Testament, many times we as followers of Jesus who seek to make His name known, find ourselves crying out to God “I have had enough Lord”. Learning how to find God in our trials and to trust His loving faithfulness to refine us is a necessary part of our journey. Though sometimes difficult to share openly, the failures, disappointments, and hard times are important in the life of a global worker. Most often, just as in Elijah’s life in I Kings 19, the beauty and majesty and power of God meet us in these times. Sharing from her personal journey in medical missions as a general surgeon in the Middle East and in Kenya, Dr. Carol Spears will explore ways from scripture to find hope and beauty in the desert experiences of missionary service. The scripture is I Kings 19