Surgery in Austere Environments?

[throwaway-20171001]

Hi all,

Not sure if this is the right forum, but I'm not sure where to ask. I'm a 4th-year US medical student looking for something that might be a little off the beaten path as an elective rotation. Specifically, surgery in a resource-austere environment. I.e., surgery when you don't have the resources that are available to a normal operating room in a Western country.

I am not going into surgery as a specialty, I just want to see how it is done. The fewer resources, the better.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks.

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[Psai]

 

[deleted480308]

Just want to go cuttin' on natives for fun? Not good

 

[Menander's Bust]

Try someplace like Uganda, maybe do a tropical medicine elective. You will see all kinds of medical care in austere environments. I would not say there is no value to this as it is what made me want to become a doctor in the first place!

 

[tick_tock400]

Wouldn't high acuity teaching centers in the US be good training environments? I can imagine you could learn a lot from working through ER or Surgery in places like Miami, New Orleans, LA, etc where even though many resources may exist, the experience may be very beneficial as there's a huge volume of patients, tons of trauma and high acuity needs, and the triaging is done to maximize use of all of these resources. I wouldn't recommend learning surgical procedures in a developing nation as a medical student; I'd recommend you to learn what the standardized best way to treat patients is and why those systems are in place before you go somewhere where patient mortality may be substantially higher, resources far fewer, and use of evidence based medicine much lower.

 

[Gorne]

After doing a bit of research between M1 and M2 i went to subsuharan Africa and did a couple of cleft palates to prepare for my surgery rotation. 10/10 would recommend

 

[VincentAdultman]

Wouldn't high acuity teaching centers in the US be good training environments? I can imagine you could learn a lot from working through ER or Surgery in places like Miami, New Orleans, LA, etc where even though many resources may exist, the experience may be very beneficial as there's a huge volume of patients, tons of trauma and high acuity needs, and the triaging is done to maximize use of all of these resources. I wouldn't recommend learning surgical procedures in a developing nation as a medical student; I'd recommend you to learn what the standardized best way to treat patients is and why those systems are in place before you go somewhere where patient mortality may be substantially higher, resources far fewer, and use of evidence based medicine much lower.

A lot of what you described you can get on your third year clerkship....and the OP isn't going into surgery, so he doesn't really need to "learn" surgical procedures.

I'm not sure why the OP wants what he wants, but I would echo the recs for locations in Africa. You're not going to find austerity in the States.

 

[valid username]

You could ask around at your program, I'm sure there are surgeons who do volunteer work. That may be the simplest way to start your search.

Eta: I'm talking about volunteering in another country if that wasn't clear. They usually don't go to resource-rich places to volunteer