I have the great pleasure of serving on the board of IVUmed, an organization committed to making quality urological care available to people worldwide. This amazing corps of physicians, nurses, and other assorted volunteers provide medical and surgical education to physicians and nurses, and treatment to thousands of suffering children and adults through outreach programs and surgical workshops.
They also sponsor a Resident Scholar program through which they have sent more than 120 urology residents to developing countries to teach surgical techniques and learn what it takes to operate in challenging resource-limited settings. The 2007-2008 program included residents from 11 programs who traveled to eight countries in Africa and Asia. (The deadline to apply for the next session is Feb. 1, 2009. Watch this space for more information.)
Under the direction of Catherine R. deVries, MD, founder, president, and an amazing pediatric urologist, IVUmed assembles volunteer teams of urologists, urogynecologists, pediatric urologists, anesthesiologists, pediatric anesthesiologists, nurse educators, and surgical nurses for teaching/working missions. Here are the dates of their upcoming trips:
Upcoming IVUmed Surgical Workshops:
West Bank, Palestine – January 9-18, 2009
Dakar, Senegal – February 13-22, 2009
Kumasi, Ghana – February 22-27, 2009
Dharan, Nepal – March 18-31, 2009
Upcoming Resident Scholar Trips:
India – December 19-28, 2008
Haiti – January 23-31, 2009
Volunteers have been recruited for many of these trips. However, if you are interested in possibly adding volunteer service to your locum tenens or international locums career, please contact IVUmed to join their “pool” of potential volunteers so they can match you with future needs. They particularly appreciate the flexibility, energy, and sense of adventure they find in physicians who have worked locum tenens or international locums assignments. Email info@ivumed.org, visitwww.ivumed.org, or call 801-524-0201.
Here’s an excerpt from the field notes from their recent trip to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
IVUmed Team:
Catherine deVries, MD—pediatric urologist, and team leader
Blake Hamilton, MD—urologist
Sujith Reddy, MD—IVUmed Resident Scholar
Norifumi Kuratani, MD—pediatric anesthesiologist
Janet Vogt, RN—nurse
Pamela St. Louis, RN—nurse
Edd and Ellen Thorp—trip secretaries
Mongolian Partners:15 physicians
9 Nurses, technicians, and other staff
Patients Served:
96 children and adults
Total Value of Service:
$312,935
“All of the patients are doing very well, which is great. Dr. deVries is a highly revered person. When we walk down the halls people look at her with gratitude and wonder. As one of the patients wrote on a thank you gift to her, ‘You are an angel sent down to us from heaven.’ The local surgeons were very happy to have mastered some new techniques. They were also pretty thrilled with the donations we were able to leave behind. There is a saying: ‘It's not where you go, it's what you do when you get there.’” --Ellen Thorp, Trip Secretary
You can read field notes and see photos of all IVUmed trips on their blog,http://www.nexuscomputerconsulting.com/clients/ivumed/blog/. And I encourage you to become a fan on their Facebook page so you can stay abreast of their programs and progress.
