CHCS - Perspectives Winter/Spring 2016

56 • NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY O n August 9–14, 2015, I, along with 16 other physician assistant students from the Fort Lauderdale/Davie Campus and 9 PA students from the Jacksonville Campus, embarked on a week- long medical outreach trip to the Dominican Republic just before the start of our clinical rotations. We teamed up with the nonprofit organization Global Medical Training to provide free medical exams to impoverished villages throughout the country. On the first day, we traveled to a village two hours away to set up our health care clinic, which was to be in a small, one-room building with no air conditioning or private rooms. Each patient room was simply a group of plastic chairs in a circle, with no privacy whatsoever. Essentially, our one-room office had six individual patient rooms or chair clusters where a patient could see a few PA students working as a team, along with a translator. The PA students took a medical history, performed a physical exam, and determined a treatment plan for each patient. We would then consult with one of the volunteer- ing medical doctors to confirm our diagnosis and treatment. We saw approximately 200 patients each day, each one with a unique story to tell. There was an 83-year- old man who had never seen a doctor, a 40-year-old man who was paralyzed from the waist down after being brutally stabbed, and an elderly woman with a large mass on her abdomen that looked like cancer. For five consecutive days, we traveled to some of the poorest communities to set up makeshift clinics and provide basic health care with the other mission volunteers. We were exhausted, covered in mosquito bites, and drenched in sweat, but at the end of a long day, we would leave the village and return to our air-conditioned hotel and plush mattresses. The patients we saw during the day, however, would go back to their one-bed- room houses that had dirt floors, no running water, and flimsy thatched roofs. While we educated these poverty- stricken people on diseases and preventive health care, they taught us even more by opening our eyes to the world around us. It was there, in the Dominican Republic, amid the sweltering heat and incessant mosquitos, where we were reminded why we set out to study medicine in the first place. We brought the blessing of health care to underprivileged communities and, in turn, were blessed ourselves. ■ Outreach Trip Provides Dual Blessings BY BECKS URRUTIA, B.S., CLASS OF 2016 FORT LAUDERDALE Physician Assistant