UAB's Office of Global Health and International Emergency Medicine organizes annual trips to send faculty, fellows and residents to Tenwek Hospital in Bomet, Kenya. Tenwek is considered a tertiary care referral center in southwestern Kenya, located in the beautiful rolling hills of the Kenyan highlands where much of the Kenyan coffee and tea is grown. This past year, the department sent two separate groups with Chris Greene, M.D., Matt Heimann, M.D., Cameron Crosby, M.D., and Jake Morris, M.D., to serve for about one month. Many of the volunteers brought their families along, including small children.
The trips have a twofold purpose: to educate and to provide clinical service. The group works alongside local medical staff, residents and nurses to teach and deliver high quality emergency medical care. The group worked mainly in an area of the hospital known as “Casualty”, which is the equivalent of their emergency department. Physicians from the group supervised care and helped resuscitate and stabilize sick trauma and medical patients. They also organized teaching sessions for the nurses, interns and clinical officers on various topics related to emergency medicine: advanced cardiac life support, understanding EKGs, skeletal radiograph interpretation and understanding arrhythmias.
“We leave these trips feeling like we receive as much or more from the Tenwek staff as they receive from us,” said Crosby. “We learn how to practice medicine and serve in a limited resource environment, and we always leave feeling encouraged by the Kenyans serving there.”