Rethinking Medical Missions

One of the many reasons we came to Kijabe was to get an idea of what it would be like to live and practice medicine overseas on a longer term basis. I always thought this would be part of my practice in the future but have not been sure how it would all play out. I also always saw myself in a Spanish speaking country as I speak Spanish but didn’t want to limit myself and thought Sub-Sahara Africa sounded like a new adventure.

But one of the difficulties in making a long term commitment is not only language and culture differences, it’s educational and social reasons as well. You miss your friends and family. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Drs. Jennifer and Scott Mhyre this month. They are physicians who had been working in Uganda for 17 years, raising their four kids there (even through the ebola outbreak!). Scott and I had a great discussion during an hour long paracentesis while draining 5L of ascitic fluid out of a woman’s abdomen who most likely had cancer in her liver (very slow due to the tubing available). I was asking him how they overcame these obstacles of being a westerner in a foreign land. He said that through World Harvest, his organization that led him to Uganda, they went as a team with five families of close friends. He said the group changed over the course of the years but they always had a core group that stretched over the 17 years. He said it was ideal and really the only way he’s seen missionaries make it. You always have someone to hold your accountable, especially important in medicine as staying up with the latest information is daunting even in the states. It gave me an idea.....thinking about my fellow Swedes (residents) back home. Want to go together? Even cooler would be my closest girlfriends from med school, we all chose different specialties, we’d have a surgeon, ER doc, pediatrician, internal medicine doc, OB/Gyn and 2 family med docs. Not a bad team. Who’s up for it?