Trips abroad offer more than CME credit

Physicians earn continuing medical education credits by traveling to foreign countries and gaining cultural experiences they can translate to their practices.

By Jay Greene, AMNews staff. July 23, 2001.

The first visit to Kenya for Mary Hardy, MD, reinforced her belief in how important basic medical supplies are for underserved populations.

"I brought an herbal medicine kit, a Western medical kit and an IV to a clinic in the middle of the Serengeti Plains," said Dr. Hardy, an internist and medical director of the Mount Sinai Integrative Medical Clinic in Los Angeles.

"When the doctor saw me ... [she] told me if I had been there the day before I would have saved a baby's life. Everything we bring on these trips saves lives. It makes you feel like you are contributing."

Kathleen Squires, MD, remembers the long lines of people waiting for care at an HIV clinic in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Cape Town, South Africa.

"Patients from developing worlds have much less expectations about what can be done for them medically," said Dr. Squires, an internist and medical director at the Rand Schrader AIDS Clinic at USC Medical Center in Los Angeles. "Patients there don't think they will have the same outcome as patients here."

The weeklong trip to the Amazon that James Redmon, MD, took last November with his son, Jimmy, reminded him about the importance of good communication between patient and doctor, especially when the two speak different languages.

"The medicine I saw practiced in the jungles of the Amazon gave me a renewed appreciation for our health care system. I also saw a lot of animals in the jungle I had never seen before," said Dr. Redmon, a family physician in Louisville, Ky. [...]