Goal 1: Improve the knowledge and skills of Lumbini Medical College medical students by providing didactic lectures on topics coordinated with the LMC Advisor for Education. Provide clinical instruction on collecting a patient’s medical history, conducting physical exams, performing differential diagnosis and interpreting lab results.
Goal 2: Improve the quality of patient care and patient education by collaborating on the implementation of clinical care pathways. Assisting in program development and training of LMC personnel on community-based education initiatives focused on lifestyle modifications to improve health.
The medical students, residents and staff of Lumbini as well as the surrounding community that the hospital serves.
Lumbini Medical College and Teaching Hospital is a non-faith based institution founded in 2005. It includes a medical school, a nursing school, a school of dentistry, and a school of midwifery. It is recognized by the Nepalese Medical Council. It is located in a rural area 7 km from the city of Tansen (population 20,000).
The hospital provides services in internal medicine, pediatrics, cardiology, orthopedics, OB-GYN, psychiatry, general surgery, and emergency medicine. Procedures available include endoscopy, echocardiography, general ultrasound, stress tests, and CT scans. MRI is anticipated in the future.
The hospital serves a rural area with a population of about 200,000 people in the district of Palpa. It is often difficult for patients from the remote area to get to the hospital.
The medical school and hospital have sparse resources and often do not have specialists to teach parts of the curriculum that are required. By having volunteers come to lecture in the medical school and do teaching rounds, some of these gaps of knowledge are filled.
Strengthen the clinical skills and understanding of internal medicine concepts for medical students, residents and staff. Teach them up to date and current guidelines on patient care, management, disease processes, treatment and pathology and fill in their gaps of knowledge of their curriculum.
The didactic medical school lectures in the classroom as well as bedside teaching rounds with the residents, will serve as a model of teaching that can be carried forward by physicians and staff after the mission is complete.
Will also like to start a program of remote and e-learning by which doctors in Nepal can remotely attend lectures, seek advice, ask for collaborations with consults and get help for difficult cases from US colleagues online.
I spent 2 weeks in Tansen, Nepal volunteering at Lumbini Medical College teaching medical students and residents.Tansen is about 100 miles west of Kathmandu and nestled in the rural mountains. The population in the area is comprised mostly of farmers. In the adult medicine wards, patients were admitted with a range of illnesses from stroke and hypertensive emergency to Japanese Encephalitis Virus, Dengue, scrub typhus, TB and organophosphate poisoning. Most patients traveled by bus or motorcycle for long distances to arrive at the hospital. Daily work including bedside teaching rounds in the wards and ICU as well as didactic clinical lectures and then afternoons shadowing in the OPD. It was an incredible experience and one I will never forget!
