NSU Horizons Spring/Summer 2008

D espite abject poverty, stifling heat, and lack of medical facilities, Richard Giroux’s humanitarian trip to Jamaica last year changed his life and clarified his reason for becoming a doctor. “We got to help the neediest people,” said the second-year medical student at Nova Southeastern University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine (COM), which heads international medical missions. Working out of churches and buildings turned into makeshift hospitals, Giroux was part of a team that spent more than a week treating thousands of indigent patients in Jamaica last summer. He is one of a grow- ing number of COM students and health professionals expanding their medical reach by participating in medical missions in the Caribbean, South Amer- ica, and Africa. The interdisciplinary squad of health care professionals, composed of students and faculty members, travels to different developing countries to pro- vide care to rural and urban under- served populations, which is one of the medical school’s goals. The missions provide the needy with vital health services in impover- ished areas while giving medical students a once-in-a-lifetime learning experience. “Some of the conditions we worked in were absolutely hor- rible, but, we learned so much,” Giroux said. Some of the missions are run by NSU’s medical school, which began the program in 2000, while others operate through inter- national aid groups. But all of them provide medical students with a chance to become student doctors without borders. “They get to treat patients who desperately need health care,” said Paula Anderson-Worts, D.O., M.P.H., associate professor in COM’s Depart- ment of Family Medicine, who has coordinated the missions to Jamaica for the past seven years. The Caribbean Anderson-Worts will lead another group of 130 students and health professionals to Jamaica in June. Most of the health professionals on the missions are from NSU’S Health Professions Division (HPD). They offer care in specialties including dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy. The group will treat thousands of patients during the nine-day mission to Kingston and St. Mary. Organizers have made a point of adding new disciplines to address this population’s greatest medical needs. 24 horizons By Julie Levin M edical Missions: serving the underserved NSU-COM student Jorge Cabrera, Jr., carries an injured patient during the 2007 Medical Mission to Ecuador.