That certainly seems to be the case, especially at my school where we have "medical mission" trips. However, how is a pre-med student in any shape or form able to assess, diagnose, treat and monitor patients? I understand that there are some who have EMT and med tech certification, but that's useful only up to a certain point. They still would lack the knowledge and ability to successfully take care of the patient.
I just want to differentiate between the medical missions pre-meds go on and the type of work OP is describing. The medical missions pre-meds go on, which are usually only three weeks and allow people to do things outside their scope of practice, are almost always unethical. OP is talking about long-term, sustained work.
Secondly, there are HUGE problems with hopping over to another country that are often ignored. There are language problems along with cultural shock and acclimatization. What works in the West doesn't work over there.
This is something that numerous organizations have realized over the past few years and have adapted accordingly. It can be done with cultural sensitivity.
That's why I absolutely disdain these trips. It's nothing more than glorified vacation time.
Once again, it depends on the trip. The three-week ones I mentioned are, indeed, nothing more than glorified vacation time for the pre-med and a quick self-esteem/ego boost for the physician. In fact, they have nicknamed "Voluntourism".
Long-term, sustained trips (well, most of them) are not glorified vacations in the least.
Here's the problem. We think that they're all starving and being butchered in civil wars over there, but that's NOT the case. Yes, there are cases of that happening in less developed regions of the world, but that's confined to certain areas (with exceptions of course). They have the ability to generate local doctors that can take care of the locals, but they are unable to do so because of 1. Brain Drain and 2. Lack of effective facilities.
While most of this is true, the training that their own physicians receive (if we are referring to third world countries, where these trips are focused) is not the equivalent of our own. Due to the lack of resources, they do not know how to do numerous procedures, manage certain illnesses, work with pharmaceuticals, etc. (and what oreama said)
Importing a bunch of docs from the West over there to fix up Jose and Raul and Peter is great, but it doesn't fix the inherent problems I mentioned above. It's easy to use Paul Farmer as a counter-example, but that misses the mark because Farmer had a completely different approach. Although he supplied his expertise and equipment (well... technically Harvard Med's/Brigham's stuff), he recruited heavily from locals for population surveys and employed Haitian docs. What we need to do is to recruit local doctors who understand their fellow people better than we ever can and give them the resources needed to carry out their work.
I agree 100%. You need to involve the local population and train them to sustain what you have started once you have left. You, however, are making the mistake and assuming that organizations that do this do not exist; they absolutely do. Many of the organizations that recruit physicians long term -- such as Doctors Without Borders and, I am going to assume, the ones OP is mentioning -- take the time to work with physicians already in the area and teach/train them. Once again, it is important to differentiate between what one usually thinks of when they here "Medical Mission Trips" and true, well-executed International Medicine.
