If God has been nudging you about serving in missions, you have many questions: How do I know I’m called? How do I pick a mission agency? What training should I get? What about raising support? What is it like to raise your kids overseas? How can I avoid burnout? Using his experience and lots of stories, Dr. Stevens will answer these questions and others at this popular breakout session.
As a medical missionary
you will face many ethical challenges you never experienced during your training or practice in the
US. When should you do procedures that you are not trained to do? How do you justly allocate your limited resources of time, supplies, and equipment? What about bribes? Should you provide better access at a higher cost to those that can afford it? As a trained bio-ethicist and missionary, Dr. Stevens will share practical Biblical based principles to guide you on these and many other issues.
The Pan-African Academy
of Christian Surgeons is a general surgery residency for African national physicians. Founded in 1997, it presently is training 35 residents and has graduated 20 fully trained surgeons. The lessons learned and applicability to similar programs in Africa will be discussed.
Relatively uncommon
in N. America, tropical pyomyositis, acute and chronic osteomyelitis and septic arthritis are frequently encountered by medical missionaries in the developing world. Resources may be poor and specialists rare. This session is designed to give the nonspecialist medico a practical, case-oriented approach to these problems.
Abdominal pain in the tropics includes many of the same diseases as elsewhere but there are conditions that are unique. Using a case-based approach, some of the more common of the conditions that cause acute abdominal pain will be discussed. Approaches to diagnosis and treatment, especially those that are not obvious to the practitioner from N. America, will be discussed in an interactive style.