During this trip, we will plan to see patients in clinic, operate, and teach (both didactic lectures after the OR and with a Ho Chi Minh City second annual hand and upper extremity conference.
This funding will not only allow direct teaching of residents, attendings, hand therapists, faculty/staff and direct patient care but will impact the greater community surrounding Ho Chi Minh City. The academic and case-based conference was initiated last year and was incredibly well received and attended.
The community in and surrounding Ho Chi Minh City will benefit. Given the capacity building aspect in which training and sustainability are emphasized, this allows the benefits of funding to be leveraged and greater than a short-term trip.
In clinic, we aim to see about 50 patients on a Monday. Tuesday through Friday will be surgery in the morning (about 5 cases a day), followed by didactics (attended by about 30 residents, attendings, staff/faculty).
The expected impact is direct educational and technical knowledge gained from the residents, attendings, faculty/staff at Hospital 175. Further, patient care will be directly provided and, given the educational component, this knowledge will be carried forward. For example - teaching residents and attendings a framework by which to take care of wrist fractures (for example, as one of the most common fractures), will allow them to subsequently teach others and provide patient care long term and across the community. We aim to understand educational/knowledge and care gaps and tailor educational initiatives to these conditions such that the community will be able to benefit to the greatest extent in a sustainable manner.
This trip was both service based (we were in clinic and assisted with surgery) and education/capacity building based (we presented at a national hand/upper extremity surgery conference). This trip impacted not just the patients we interacted with but we hope this trip had a more broad impact on given its training approach
