UIC Med/Dent/Environmental December 2014 Panama

Start Date: Dec 14, 2014 12:00 AM
End Date: Dec 22, 2014 12:00 AM

Medical Brigade volunteers will set up temporary clinics in pre-identified communities in Eastern Panama to provide healthcare where access is limited. Each community receives a brigade every 3-4 months. Students on the brigade are given the opportunity to shadow licensed health care professionals while learning about local Panamanian culture. A typical Medical/Dental Brigade clinic consists of six stations: Intake, Triage, Consultation, Dental, Charla (health education), and Pharmacy. Electronic patient records are collected during the brigade to ensure patient follow-up as well as to monitor overall community health trends. Between brigades, the in-country team maintains relationships with the communities to provide follow-up and conduct community health worker training aimed at empowering local leaders to perpetuate a consistent level of health care. For every student who volunteers on a Global Medical Brigade, sixty patients can see a doctor who otherwise would not be able to.

In addition, volunteers on this brigade will be participating in the construction of in-home public health infrastructures projects to help combat some of the health issues that are seen in our Medical Brigade clinics. Currently, the Public Health program in Panama builds latrines for families that have expressed interest. However, our Public Health team is always looking to improve and expand on our Public Health projects and are collaborating with communities after each brigade to collect information on the projects and how we can improve for future initiatives.