We just finished our first set of medical camps for this year with the team from America. 4 straight camps - quite tiring but soooo good :) Everything was perfect! hehe! Because the team of Cambodian medical students, the american team and myotherapy team were just so wonderful. Our first day hotel was horrible - we couldn't even use the towels, but that just made the next few days so much better! I usually have a hard time with food, but this time people joked about becoming vegetarian :) We ended up seeing 200+ the first day, about 200 the second, 150+ the third and the 4th day when we were all so tired we finished early before lunch but still managed to see 100 patients! :) My cap is 100-150 so we more than exceeded my goals! And speaking of goals, the whole idea of medical camps started because I had medical students I was teaching. I had wanted to do free medical camps for the villagers but found I had to pay bribes to make it happen and that is something I definitely was not willing to pay. So when I found out the students in Cambodia don't get enough clinic experience I told them if they could arrange a medical camp, we would do it. I could do the medical camps I wanted, the students could be the doctors precepted by me and the villagers could have free care. It's been 5 years now and we are such a well oiled machine. My original students who are now leaders of the cambodian organization and I think so much alike, it's amazing!
For this set of camps we had about 6 new students and they were to be the doctors seeing patients. It made me just very slightly wary because sometimes it's soooo hard when you have to train new students and you are hot and tired and jet lagged. But we had them come and learn some basic things the day before and then on the field they were like sponges who said and did everything I taught them! They were sooo amazingly good!! and what made me so happy was that they were as happy with the experience as I was with them. When we talked at the end about the trip some of them said that is was the best mission group they had ever gone with and another said s/he learned more on this trip than s/he had at medical school (this from a 6th or 7th year student!)
For this set of camps we had about 6 new students and they were to be the doctors seeing patients. It made me just very slightly wary because sometimes it's soooo hard when you have to train new students and you are hot and tired and jet lagged. But we had them come and learn some basic things the day before and then on the field they were like sponges who said and did everything I taught them! They were sooo amazingly good!! and what made me so happy was that they were as happy with the experience as I was with them. When we talked at the end about the trip some of them said that is was the best mission group they had ever gone with and another said s/he learned more on this trip than s/he had at medical school (this from a 6th or 7th year student!)
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