The Recipe for Change
I was one of four Penn trainees visiting Botswana. Alongside me in the luxury apartment were three medical students. One was a PhD with cardiology aspirations, who would accept no…
My Journey Through the World of Humanitarian Medicine
The more I learn about health inequality, the more I realize that the underpinning of inequality is tied to imperfect social structures, infrastructure deficits, and issues of governance. I could run around treating patients for a hundred years without ever impacting the true root of inequality, and the origin of poor healthcare has to be addressed farther back than at the bedside. So despite my love for the jungle, cold showers, and the romance of resource-limited medicine, this attachment at the University of Botswana-UPenn partnership was instrumental to my understanding of global health.
A two-year administrative process that started when I first arrived in Philadelphia led to six weeks as a visiting resident at Princess Marina Hospital in Gaborone. Exposed to a new world in which I had far less to teach than I did to learn, I treated patients, learned about frameworks, and developed a far deeper understanding for why you can’t approach two systems in the same way.
I was one of four Penn trainees visiting Botswana. Alongside me in the luxury apartment were three medical students. One was a PhD with cardiology aspirations, who would accept no…
I kept my usual pep as I sauntered into the ICU the next morning. I had spent some time reflecting on my circumstances and how I could help. In truth,…
When I was in medical school, I got a summer research scholarship to join a lab at the University of Toronto. I worked under a seasoned and clinically retired surgeon…
After three weeks on the inpatient wards, I felt a longing for my biggest passion in medicine. So, after some strategic phone calls and well-placed visits to the intensive care…
Over the next several days I became more familiar with both the system and my team. We had six students in total, five ladies and one lad. After watching them…
Admitting patients to the hospital is my favourite part of internal medicine. The first 24 hours of a patient’s journey in the hospital are typically the most active, as medical…
My first full day on the wards felt like a dunk in cold water. I knew I would feel useless, and boy did I live up to expectation. The infrastructure…
The more I learn about health inequality, the more I realize that the underpinning of inequality is tied to imperfect social structures, infrastructure deficits, and issues of governance. I could…