This June, I will be teaching medical students on their core internal medicine clerkship at the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE)'s campus in Butaro, Rwanda. UGHE is a not-for-profit Health Sciences University founded by the late Paul Farmer and colleagues at Partners in Health in 2015. UGHE has built a robust medical education system that depends on visiting faculty.
I hope to serve both the patients of UGHE on the general medicine wards as well as the clerkship students. As a clinician educator, I currently teach medicine residents and medical students the core principles of clinical practice on the wards and will do the same for the students of UGHE. I will model and teach bedside physical exam, history-taking, and high value, evidence-based care. Since this will be students' core medicine clerkship as junior medical students, this is a foundational and inspirational time in their journeys to becoming physicians.
I have been drawn to volunteer at UGHE based on the social justice missions of this institution. It seeks to educate doctors and changemakers in Rwanda who will help to improve the healthcare outcomes and healthcare equity for patients individually and the Rwandan people more generally. Though a relatively new university, UGHE has already been impactful in Rwanda and abroad, forging clinician leaders keen to better patient care and enhance healthcare systems.
My hope is help train the next generation of doctors/internists in Rwanda and inspire them to serve each individual patient they see in a clinical encounter and more broadly, the community of Butaro and population of Rwanda. The skills learnt in a core medicine clerkship are fungible and useful in many aspects of medical care (including other specialties) and public health, such as communication, patient-centered care, evidence-based decisionmaking, among other skills.
I hope my individual impact will contribute to the larger UGHE aims of training competent, compassionate clinicians and inspiring these doctors to foster better access to high quality healthcare.
Further, I hope this will become a longitudinal service project, complementing my work as a clinician educator in the United States and facilitating an exchange of ideas and enthusiasm for internal medicine, social justice, and healthcare equity.
As a visiting faculty member, I was able to teach about 20 medical students who are in the midst of their core internal medicine junior clerkship at Butaro District Hospital. Together with these energetic and thoughtful students, we were able to care for patients on the general medicine wards and in the Emergency Department. I also served as a consultant / sounding board to intern resident physicians and general practitioners caring for patients on the general medicine wards.
