Final Thoughts

2/25/12

Posted by Lisa Ryujin, MD (a fourth year Ob/Gyn resident from Kaiser Permanente Oakland reflecting on on her global health elective in Daet, Philippines with Bay Area Surgical Mission).
I came to the Philippines unsure about how I would feel about a trip concentrating on providing surgery. However, over the course of my time here, I have realized that providing these services to those who did not have the means sometimes meant changing lives. One of the residents and I would stay up late and discuss the ethics of the surgeries, making sure that we were supervised and performing the same roles that we had in the USA. We talked about the responsibility that we felt for our post operative outcomes and how important morning and evening rounds were in making sure our patients were well taken care of. My attending and I were talking about the ‘magical post operative day 2’ and how happy and pain free the patients were. They asked to take pictures with us and took the post operative medications with huge smiles. We also talked about how wonderful it was to work with the Filipino nurses an the familiarity of our own nurses. They worked together as a team, and at the end of the day, the patients always came first.

I’m so grateful that I was able to participate in such a wonderful group effort, it was a true pleasure, and I can’t wait to come back!