“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Gandhi
I got a needed dose of wellness recently with a rejuvenating medical mission trip with Faith in Practice Team 825.
Faith in Practice is a non-profit Christian organization that seeks to improve the physical, spiritual, and economic conditions of the poor in Guatemala through integrated surgical, medical, and dental mission trips and health-related educational programs. Providence has a long-running partnership and many of its providers and staff have joined forces and volunteered.
This past August a group of us spent a week in Guatemala providing care to a small town in the mountains. A rag-tag group of 11 volunteers from all over the US, and a team of 40 from Guatemala, joined forces and met in a small village in the mountains. I was privileged to have a 4th year UW medical student join us and share the experience.
After a day of travel and orientation, and a few hours to organize and set up our rudimentary clinic in an outdoor community center, we started seeing patients of all kinds. Our team included family docs and internists, a pediatrician, OB/GYN and ARNP, 3 nurses and a pharmacy tech. Patient numbers were high but many of the time-drags of our way of practicing in the US were absent. It was a concentrated dose of patient connections without the time-suck and hassle of payors or prior auths, and with minimal EMR time, all to a goal of meeting the patients’ needs at that moment, and getting them to the next level of care if needed. With a basic lab and a well-stocked pharmacy we saw a lot of patients. Many needed additional testing, some specialty consultation, and a few needed surgery.
Faith in Practice is set up to do this work. It’s what makes their work so effective, and so rewarding as a primary care doc. Many patients have aches and pains that Tylenol and NSAIDs can be welcome treatments. Many have chronic illnesses requiring chronic meds. Some need new hips and knees. Some have hernias that need fixing or fibroids that need to come out. A few have rare conditions that take some time and conversation with a colleague to think through. Many have advanced disease you don’t see too often back home.
All of this work is very doable with the network of support set up by Faith in Practice. And all of this was accomplished by our rag-tag team 825. By end-of week we saw 770 patients many of whom will be scheduled for their surgeries with future Faith in Practice teams in Antigua and elsewhere. We returned exhausted and rejuvenated, ready to rejoin our family and friends with new stories, and ready to rejoin our practices with peace and some newfound energy.
If you want to join us next year, please send me a note (DevCinSawyer@gmail.com) or watch for the email invite that will be circulated in the new year. Our 2025 trip dates are August 9th to 16th (https://www.faithinpractice.org/volunteer/#Trip-Dates). We can use FPs and internists, urgent care folks, Peds and GYN, sports med folks, nurses, and others so keep us in mind if you’ve been thinking about a trip such as this, and send me a note.
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” Arthur Ashe
Kindly submitted,
Devin Sawyer, MD
