We are doing general and plastic surgeries in an underserved population, and I will first assist, scrub, and circulate to help the mission run more smoothly for everyone.
We will be operating on the pediatric population in Hue and surrounding areas who would otherwise not be able to have their cleft palates, hernias, and various deformities fixed.
This will help the people of Vietnam, but also impact people here to give of themselves and future missions will benefit from the sharing of the trip, which will inspire others to give and to organize future trips to spread the love and help throughout the world.
The children of Hue, Vietnam and their families were greatly impacted by this surgical mission, as we completed 51 procedures in 5 days, ranging from large facial nevi removals to orchiopexy to hernia repairs and hypospadias repairs, polydactyly & syndactyly, cleft lip revisions to complex cleft palates and lip repairs! Children’s lives were forever changed, their parents cried with joy, and we were at a university hospital with many med students and residents there observing, participating, and learning, which will greatly impact the community going forward. But even with all of that, I feel like the impact this mission had on the team we assembled to make all of these life-changing surgeries possible may have been the greatest of all. I know that I personally feel so much fulfillment from this experience and am so grateful for the opportunity to participate in the mission, I am now hooked for life and want to go on all the missions! Surgical Volunteers International is such an amazing organization that there were multiple team members on this mission who go on multiple missions throughout the years and have done for many years, and every one of them praised SVI as the best of the best, so I am doubly fortunate to have been included with this group! Even after 26 years working in surgery, I learned many new tricks and tips from this multicultural group of professionals that I have brought back to the states with me! I’ve gained a greater appreciation for how fortunate we are here in America, and also for how wasteful we are here… We used our limited supplies so sparingly in Vietnam and then I returned to work and watched the staff throw away perfectly good gowns and drapes and sponges and sutures and things we just carelessly open here before we even know we need them. Ive changed my ways and am getting coworkers to do the same. We got a great cultural exchange there as well, learning about their history and foods and surgical practices while teaching them ours. They happen to be having their annual gala for the university on our last surgical day and they invited us and the women had custom Ao Dai made (traditional Vietnamese garments) to wear, and we all really enjoyed participating in their cultural event and they really appreciated that we dressed in their traditional garments! I believe any time we exchange cultural ideas and traditions, it helps the world gain understanding and empathy toward each other, and that impacts all of humanity in the best way. I cannot thank Doximity Foundation enough for the assistance with the flight! I am self-employed, which means if I’m not at work, I’m not paid- there is no PTO, so being gone for 10 days with no pay would have been much harder if I was also paying the high price for the flight half way across the world. What a wonderful organization to help make these trips possible to assist in changing so many people’s lives- patients, families, local staff and volunteers, their communities, and the mission team.
