The Jan 2016 Clinical Rotation: Chichi and Lake Atitlan, Jan 9-20
Kelsie, Jessica, and Meredith at Lake Atitlan
The January University of Texas Medical Branch Physician Assistant School clinical rotation turned out to be a great success at various levels, as the three students and their mentors treated hundreds of patients over the course of 18 working days.
As with past medical missions and training experiences facilitated by Consultants for Community Development (CCD), the majority of the
work was done at government clinics – and all of it, wherever the consultations took place – was done in cooperation with local offices and facilities of the Guatemalan Public Health Ministry.
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This is consistent with CCD’s goal of not only providing charitable medical care to a needful population, but of working to promote sustainable social development within poor communities. We believe this kind of real social development is far more likely to take place through intellectual exchange with local medical professionals, and in support of impoverished and underfunded local public health services on which the vast majority of Guatemalans must rely. To do this, we work in conjunction with community public health centers to provide services and expertise that are simply not available in rural indigenous communities, as well as by providing medications and treatments that would not otherwise be available to patients in this desperately poor country with its frankly dysfunctional government
During the January rotation, the three UTMB students and two mentors worked for two weeks in the “Centros de Salud,” or national public health centers, in San Cristobal Totonicapán and Olintepeque Quetzaltenango, commuting each day from the nearby city of Quetzaltenango. In each location, one or two of the three students did general medical consultations, examining and treating walk-ins for a variety of illnesses and conditions, while the other one or two students worked with CCD’s ongoing women’s health project clinic doing gynecological exams and cryosurgical treatments for removal of precancerous cervical lesions.
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Meanwhile, in the more remote pueblo of Chichicastenango, one or two students worked each day in the women’s clinic in that community’s Centro de Salud, while the other one or two worked together doing wellness exams at the office of a local non-governmental organization (NGO), ACEBAR, which administrates education and family health projects in this large but quite rural municipality. Over the course of eight days of working at ACEBAR, the UTMB PA students did about 150 physicals and a few walk-in general medical consultations, along the way treating patients for illnesses ranging from colic to severe impetigo to bronchitis and the flu.
The group of students – who were all very energetic workers and outstanding travel companions – worked hard and, when they had the chance, played hard. We think – and believe – they had fun, and we’re sure their cultural horizons were expanded by the experience. And certainly I personally had a good time getting to know them during the first two weeks of their trip, until I had to return to the real workaday world of New York while they continued to work for another week and a half.
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It was such a great experience that now I, along with my CCD collaborators – including preceptors Drs. Patricia Crane & Sandy Maya; Quetzaltenango facilitators Hugo & Elbia; Chichicastenango facilitators Manuela & Estuardo and the whole crew of ACEBAR; staff at the Centros de Salud in Chichicastenango, Olintepeque, and San Cristobal; and various midwives, natural healers, midwives, translators, and other support personnel – are very much looking forward to the second UTMB PA School Clinical Rotation, scheduled to begin two weeks from today with an orientation and clinic on Sunday, May 29.
Stay tuned for updates on the next UTMB PA Student Rotation!
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