What I Learned from Doctors Who Take Their Skills Around the World

One of the great things about being a healthcare writer is getting to talk with people who do extraordinary things, especially when they don't consider what they do to be extraordinary at all.

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview several physicians who take time out of their busy practices to provide care and share their expertise in parts of the world where medical resources are scarce. Prepared to hear about the challenges of practicing medicine in places without the technology, staffing, and resources U.S. physicians take for granted, what stayed with me was the way these physicians talked about their work. I got no sense that they considered their work to be heroic or that they had swooped in to save the day by performing procedures or "saving" patients. In fact, several of the physicians I spoke with pushed back against the idea of characterizing these trips as medical "missions."

The goal: To become obsolete

For them, the ultimate goal was always to help build something that remains after they leave, whether that meant teaching a surgical technique, mentoring local physicians, helping develop protocols, providing equipment and the training to use it, or establishing relationships that continue throughout the year.

One physician described the ultimate goal in particularly striking terms: to eventually make the visiting physician unnecessary.

I love that idea.

In a world where we're usually encouraged to demonstrate our value by making ourselves indispensable, success in this kind of work can mean making yourself obsolete.

Bidirectional learning

I was also struck by how much the physicians said they learn. Many told me that working without immediate access to every test, technology, or specialist forced them back to the basics — listening, examining, observing, and relying on their clinical judgment. In many of the environments they told me about, they encountered conditions at stages they rarely see in the United States. And the cooperation and knowledge sharing among providers in those environments was truly bidirectional. They learned a great deal from in-country clinicians who had become extraordinarily resourceful because they had to be.

I think my favorite example of what sustainable global health work can look like came from a program that trained clinicians in Ecuador in obstetric hemorrhage and neonatal resuscitation. Once the visiting American clinicians share their expertise, the local clinicians adapted what they'd learned and began teaching it in their own communities. So the knowledge traveled much farther than the people who originally brought it. That's a very different way to think about the impact of global health outreach.

What stays with them

There was something else I heard in these conversations that was harder to capture in the article I was writing: how deeply this work seems to affect the people who do it.

These aren't easy trips. The days can be long, resources are limited, and travel can be arduous. Yet, listening to the doctors talk, I kept hearing about the places they hoped to return to and the people they still considered colleagues long after they'd come home.

One story in particular stayed with me.

During a women's health trip to Ecuador, one of the U.S. doctors taught neonatal resuscitation with the help of a local medical student who translated her presentation. Years later, he contacted her. He had since become a physician and was completing a year of community service in rural Ecuador, and he'd translated and recreated her neonatal resuscitation presentation for use there. He told her it had helped in rural emergencies.

Imagine receiving that message.

She also talked about the camaraderie she experienced with local healthcare teams and the little things she has learned to bring with her — reading glasses for hospital staff, newborn hats and blankets made by friends back home. At the end of a trip, she leaves behind virtually everything she can: scrubs, clogs, supplies. On one trip, just about the only thing that came home with her was the stethoscope she'd had since she began practicing and couldn't bear to leave behind.

Those details probably tell me as much about the pull of this work as any statistic could.

The clinicians I spoke with weren't simply describing places where they had gone to provide care. They were talking about people they knew, colleagues they remained connected to, places they hoped to see again and knowledge that continued traveling long after they had returned home.

Maybe that's part of why this work inspires such passion. The impact doesn't end when the trip does. And neither do the relationships.

An unexpected detour

I started these interviews thinking I was going to write about physicians bringing their skills to places where they were needed. I came away thinking much more about what happens when expertise is shared: how knowledge multiplies, how relationships continue across borders, and how even highly trained physicians can return home better at what they do because of what someone halfway around the world taught them.

It's one of the things I love most about writing about healthcare. Every so often, I get an assignment that gives me an entirely new way of looking at something I thought I understood.