I will be joining the NGO Floating Doctors to increase access to healthcare by providing clinics in villages across rural Panama. I am taking this trip with fellow members of my Doctor of Medical Science Program at the University of Lynchburg. Floating Doctors travels to rural villages to operate mobile clinics that offer both wellness and problem-focused visits, prenatal care, health education, prescription refills, and more. They also arrange transfers to specialists and provide community public health education as needed. This region of Panama has difficulty accessing healthcare due to its location, cost, and other social determinants of health.
Below are the mission and goals of Floating Doctors:
Mission Statement
The Floating Doctors' ongoing mission is to reduce the present and future burden of disease in the developing world, and to promote improvements in health care delivery worldwide.
Goals:
1. Providing free acute and preventative health care services
2. Improving access to specialist medical care in developing regions
3. Studying community development and capacity-building initiatives
4. Collecting clinical data for program and health landscape monitoring
5. Reducing child and maternal mortality
6. Promoting improvements in health care practice worldwide
Rural communities in the Bocas del Toro region of Panama. I am looking forward to serving this population, as I have a background in Spanish. I am thankful to partner with an organization that already has a presence and relationship with the villages we will be serving. This foundation of trust will be invaluable for accomplishing our mission goals.
It has always been my dream and goal to participate in humanitarian work, particularly in medical missions. If this trip goes well and I am able to be of service to this organization and its population, I hope to continue taking trips to work with this organization and perhaps join other PA and NP colleagues. Not only will we be providing a practical need for this community, but I also hope to carry this experience forward. I hope that this experience will lead to an annual or biannual cadence of participation in medical missions. I hope that we will be able to leave these rural villages in Panama healthier than we found them.
The people impacted by this trip included the Ngabe people located in the community of Bisira. This is an indigenous community with very limited access to health care, located on the northwestern coast of Panama. We served people of all ages, from pediatrics to older adults, and treated various conditions, including infectious diseases and chronic conditions such as hypertension and type 2 diabetes. Many women came for prenatal care and family planning services, and we also screened over 100 people for HIV. We served many in this community and also had people traveling to the community to be seen by us (one of my patients had traveled 8 hours to get to our clinic). While I was part of the medical team, there was also a veterinary team that held a clinic as well. The organization that hosted our team of volunteers is called Floating Doctors. They make rotations to many communities off the coast of Panama, providing medical care and participating in community health education and improvement projects. Not only were we able to provide medical care to the community of Bisira, but we were able to serve by helping the staff of this amazing NGO by organizing medical supplies and medications in preparations for future week's clinics.
