Mother Africa - half a loaf is better than none

It's been a while since I posted. It has been busy at school/clinic and can't wait for the last month of my Junior year to be over! I got this interesting article in my inbox from the surgery group of the American Medical Association: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000078. It touches on how non medical staffs have been trained in courses as short as 6 months in order to carry out simple surgical procedures in some African countries. While the surgical residency in the United States takes 5yrs, and I recognize the fact that surgery is a highly specialized art and needs lots of training, I also sympathize with pts in Africa who don't have enough doctors, let alone specialists (surgeons). So I would rather have a well trained non medical personnel perform a simple procedure to prevent a life long deformity or death than nothing.

My hope is that clear boundaries and good supervision be put in place so that these non medical professionals don't attempt at doing what is beyond their very short training and knowledge. There's no way that one of these professionals will match a well trained doctor b/c there's a vast difference in their knowledge of Anatomy and Physiology and in situations where surgoens could use this knowledge to their advantage to "troubleshoot" a challenging/difficult case, these trained non medical professionals would probably be baffled at what to do since they're more or less taught to "just do it" without a deep understanding of the physiology that underlies the human body. As I work towards obtaining a residency in General Surgery at a wonderful institution in the US, my long term goal is to give back to Africa. I recognize and understand how much they don't have in terms of medical professionals and especially specialist. I pray that God grant me the strength to carry out my heart's desire by providing surgical services to Africa.

On another note, I was very excited last week when Mayo clinic came through and accepted my application to do my subinternship Surgery rotation with them. It's a world-class institution and can't wait to suck, live and breath Mayo i.e surgical knowledge and experience during my month there.

I'll be sure to keep in touch.