Horizons Fall 2016

40 NSU HORIZONS W hen second-year medical student Vatche Melkonian volunteered to spend winter break on a medical outreach mission in Jamaica, he didn’t know he would witness the healing power of Paula Anderson-Worts , D.O. For 16 years, the associate professor at NSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine has led medical students, faculty members, physicians, and health care professionals to some of the poorest communities on the Caribbean island, where they provide free medical services twice a year. Last December, Anderson-Worts took 30 students on a one-week trip to Jamaica’s Westmoreland Parish, a rural, agricultural-farming region about 120 miles west of the capital of Kingston. The mission included doctors from around the country— some as far away as Alaska—who served as attending physicians. They set up makeshift examination rooms inside churches, schools, and activity centers where the professionals saw about 1,000 patients in 5 days. On the first day, under Anderson-Worts’ guidance, Melkonian applied osteopathic manipulative treatment to patients who included a woman in chronic pain from a shortened psoas muscle. The relief was almost immediate. “Dr. Anderson-Worts is amazing,” Melkonian said. “When I got stuck on a patient, she would ask, ‘what do you think it could be?’ She asked questions to help me come to my own conclusions. That set the scene for the rest of the trip,’’ he said. “The real-world application of healing a patient with your hands is exciting. All of a sudden everything clicks and falls into place. It’s that point in medicine where you reach harmony between the educational and the practical Associate Professor Leads by Example with Medical Missions to Jamaica BY KATHLEEN KERNICKY FACULTY PROFILE Paula Anderson-Worts, D.O., has led a medical team to her native country annually for about 16 years.