JUN-A-9
THE AAMC REPORTER REQUESTS AN INTERVIEW FOR THEIR JOURNAL
HARD ON THE HEELS OF A SIMILAR REQUEST FOR A PROPOSAL
BY THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY PHOTOJOURNALIST—
MAKING ME FEEL LIONIZED FOR THE CAUSE!
Dear Jennifer:
I would be delighted!
Relay my thanks to Rachel Muir, with whom I have exchanged a number of messages, anticipating this invitation. I, and dozens of my medical students and "international adventure medicine alumni" will be more than willing to answer your questions in response to your request!
In fact, I have just got off the phone encouraging others and will call you soon to either talk for whatever time you need or set up a times to do so to your convenience.
I had been traveling with students and colleagues on medical missions in Mindanao Philippines in February/March in which I did a large number of operations, teaching the local health workers to carry on with the supplies we left with them, and for which instruction and service purposes I will be returning with a team again next February 2‑‑16.
I am arranging an extension of this Southern Hemisphere experience through my more usual turf in Southern Africa in Feb/Mar 2001 to do a medical/surgical mission in Malawi, carrying along both supplies and my medical student advisees, both from George Washington University and from some of a large number and variety of other US medical schools‑‑as has been the pattern of my trips I have been leading with the Himalayan Health Exchange.
I can make available a great deal of carefully assembled photojournalism on medical missions in the more remote parts of the world for your review, almost all of them focused on the medical student participation‑‑which is, after all, how I got my start in this very rewarding process through the AAMC auspices of what was then an African Foreign Fellowship. (I reported on my "Medical Adventures in the nigerian Bush" on my AAMC‑administered SKF Foreign Fellowship in The New Physician, Vol 17, No. 12, pp 22‑‑30, December, 1968) What I picked up from you has been a habit that has just never stopped‑‑and has been highly contagious! (I attach some recent recognition from others who have appreciated this life‑enhancing experience for medical students in opening a much larger world to serve.)
You might also find some material that is useful in my Home Page (http://home.gwu.edu/~gwg) especially in the live reports I email back from the narratives I write from such experiences in the On‑Line Journal. It would be even better if you looked into www.3hawks.com to get a copy of the book "Out of Assa: Heart of the Congo" which you will find excerpted there.
I have completed a manuscript entitled "Himalayan High: A Trilogy of Treks and Medical Missions Along the Roof of the World" involving my later experiences with medical students from many AAMC schools, while serving in Himachal (Kinnaur and Spiti Valleys in '98), Nepal (Medical Mission to the Sherpa of Lukla and the Everest Trek in '99) and Ladakh ("The Kingdom in the Clouds" with a Trek through the Chang Thang Tibetan plateau for the people around lake Tso Morari in 2000)
A recent edition of "Harvard Medicine" was on "Adventure Medicine" and actually used one of the photographs I had taken of one of my residents who had accompanied me in the Himachal trek in 1998 examining a patient in Kazak in the Spiti Valley. I was bemused in seeing this edition (actually in April while I was in McLeod Gunj in Dharamsala) since I had been to each of the venues depicted from the Arctic to the Antarctic, through many jungle rainforests and deserts along the way‑‑‑and that all within this past year alone! We had taken a few pictures of the two "Peter Bent Brigham Harvard personnel"‑‑‑me, as a surgical resident alumnus‑‑and a rising internal medicne resident entering the Brigham and Women's Hospital this July‑‑ Dr. Jenna Beart‑‑in response to a request for a follow‑on for this issue.
I will attach a recent report of the experiences of the Medical Mission to Dharamsala last month among the Tibetan Refugees along the Dhaulidhar Range in Himalayan India.
I am going abroad again soon, and will be making trips with students to Ladakh (July) the Spiti Valley in Himachal along the Tibetan Chang/Thang Plateau (September) and a medical mission to the Sherpa of Lukla in Nepal before the Everest Trek (October). I will be leaving from Namche Bazar to somehow get my way back to New Orleans for an American College of Surgeons conference at their major Clinical Congress in a plenary session on "Mission and Mercy: Opportunities for Volunteer Service by First World Surgeons to the Developing World" October 10.
Yes, I know and network with very many of like‑minded people and several organizations who may be of help to you, and I participate in the group you may know as IHMEC‑‑‑International Health Medical Education Consortium. Many students find me from across the country (and across the world) by word of mouth and internet. I have a medical student Home Page (www.gwu.edu~intmeded) which I had designed to inspire medical students in such service‑‑but it has been recently overwhelmed, since I had hoped to put on the net the reports from my returning medical students, so that there would be colleague support. I have expected no more than a dozen students to participate with me on any given mission, but have found over a thousand inquiries to respond to this year through the AAMC‑circulated note of just the Himalayan Health Exchange alone, so there has not been time and web capacity enough to update this website as one of many vehicles through which I reach medical students. I hope that you may be even more effective and helpful in inspiring them on a mission to service abroad in a way that both increases their understanding and empathy for the majority of the world's people who are not surrounded by a plethora of technology ‑intensive redundant health care opportunity‑‑whether in‑ or out‑side any recognized political boundaries. Of course, it makes better doctors of them, not just by enhancing their medical education, but by giving them an opportunity for which I have been very grateful: to learn more about the art of living and giving from the world's poor‑‑and making confirmed recidivists of them all!
Cheers!
GWG
>>> "Jennifer Proctor" <Jproctor@aamc.org> 06/05/01 04:26PM >>>
Dr. Geelhoed:
I am a writer with the Reporter, the monthly publication of the Association of American Medical Colleges. Several months ago, my managing editor, Rachel Muir, contacted you about a possible story in our publication.
I am now exploring the topic "Extreme medical education." I was wondering if you would consent to an interview, so that we could discuss your medical‑related adventures, especially those that included medical students. Would it be possible to get about 30‑40 minutes of your time sometime this week or next? Also, do you know of other doctors elsewhere in the U.S. who lead expeditions like yours?
I appreciate your consideration.
Best Regards,
Jennifer Proctor