Build upon my prior medical mission to Bhutan and provide on-going training to pediatric residents and nurses at Jigme Dorji Wangchuk Hospital (a 350 bed National Referral Hospital) in topics related to child health. My responsibilities will be to:
1. Lead journal clubs and discussion
2. Provide case presentations and discussion
3. Provide bedside clinical teaching and demonstration
4. Provide seminars, workshops and conferences on specific topics of interest as
outlined by department leadership
5. Participate in grand rounds
6. Participate in weekly faculty lectures
The way I plan to make a difference is to:
1) be a helping hand in a country where there is a significant shortage of pediatricians
2) teach evidenced based medicine to the local medical students/residents
3) enhance medical students/residents critical thinking skills
Local Bhutanese medical staff and pediatric patients.
The reason I chose to go back to Bhutan is because of the unique features of the country and its people. It is considered one of the most remote and isolated countries in the world and yet they are consistently recognized as having the happiest people in the world. They have a longstanding monarchy and their king is very well liked. People in Bhutan live by the principles of Buddhism and have great respect for nature and animals. It is a very peaceful country that unfortunately suffered greatly from the COVID-19 pandemic and is now slowly recovering. The staff at Jigme Dorji Wangchuk Hospital has voiced strong interest in establishing a longstanding working relationship with me going forward and I couldn’t be more excited.
My expertise lies in pediatric inpatient medicine, pediatric infectious diseases, and breastfeeding medicine with a strong passion for medical education. The expected impact I will have while training pediatricians at the JDWNR will be to instill in them more evidence-based practices. Furthermore, I hope to inspire them to always want to learn more, to become teachers themselves and to embrace medical experiences abroad that would enrich their knowledge.
Working at the Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Referral (JDWNR) Hospital in Thimphu for the second time will help strengthen the previous connections made and the relationship between Health Volunteers Overseas and their hospital. Furthermore, I hope to establish a foundation to facilitate future opportunities for Bhutanese pediatric residents to visit the US and vis versa.
It was a pleasure working with many of of the similar learners for the second time in less than two years as an HVO volunteer. I was impressed at how much they were all able to accomplish with the resources available and I commended them all for that.
As a volunteer, I was able to contribute in a meaningful way to the development and growth of residents, interns and medical students that spent time with me during the 5 weeks on the Pediatric WARD and PICU at JD Hospital (see pics).
Prior to my departure I was asked by some of the senior physicians to share some thoughts and suggestions on paper to help further develop the academic activities in their pediatric department. I was able to create such document as well as a volunteer folder so that future volunteers could have all the necessary information from the start and hit the ground running immediately.
