Ruth Berggren, M.D., director of the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics consults with Dr. Ulysse, an obstetrician/gynecologist from Mirebalais.
Printer Friendly Format

In Haiti’s Central Plateau, a woman with a wounded hand sought treatment from doctors and medical students visiting from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

The wound had to be cleaned, incised and drained, but doctors could not numb the woman’s hand for medical reasons. Faced with the pain, the woman found her own way to cope.

She sang.

“They said that she never even pulled her hand away,” said Christopher Gibson, one of nine medical students from the Health Science Center to make the trip in mid-December through the nonprofit group Project Medishare. “She didn’t resist at all.”

Feb. 17 event open to the public
The woman’s singing stayed with the students long after they left Haiti. And she was hardly the only person to make an impression on the students, who were struck by the strength, pride and graciousness of those they met in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. They will share their experiences on Tuesday, Feb. 17, at noon in the School of Nursing’s Nancy Smith Hurd Auditorium.

After each day’s work in Haiti, the students gathered for a debriefing session with the four doctors who accompanied them, all of whom knew Haiti well and were able to lend context to what the students had seen during the day.

Ruth Berggren, M.D., director of the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics at the Health Science Center, took the example of the singing woman, saying such a moment would be unlikely in the United States. Here, there is an expectation that someone will step in to ease pain. In contrast, the Haitian woman had learned to rely only on herself.

“This person is so accustomed to living with that pain that she didn’t have any expectations,” Dr. Berggren said. “This was very moving to some of our students.”

The ill arrived at the outdoor clinic by whatever means they had.

Students impressed with Haitians’ hospitality
The Haitians’ pride also impressed the students. Most of those seeking medical treatment arrived at the clinic in the town of Thomonde wearing their best clothes. When students visited families in their homes, hospitality took priority over poverty. The Haitians offered chairs, drinks and, in one case, pieces of the sugarcane that constituted a family’s livelihood.

“They weren’t giving us a list of everything we needed to do for them,” said Elizabeth Fernandez, a second-year medical student who, along with Gibson, served as trip leader. “They were busy trying to show off everything they had.”

Still, poverty is inescapable in Haiti. Four in five Haitians live below the poverty line, and more than half live in abject poverty. During their trip, the students saw far more infectious disease than they would in the United States, including worms, scabies and typhomalarial illnesses.

Intellectually, medical students know such poverty and sickness exist in the world, and they are aware that not everyone has the same access to medical care, Dr. Berggren said. They can see examples of that in San Antonio or along the U.S.-Mexico border.

But, Dr. Berggren said, that knowledge becomes far more powerful and personal through an experience like the Haiti trip, where poverty is unrelenting and unconcealed by familiar surroundings.

Mission reinforces ethical considerations in practicing medicine
That deeper understanding underscores the importance of “ethics in action,” which takes ethics beyond the classroom into real-world settings, she said.

Dr. Berggren spent childhood in Haiti
For Dr. Berggren, too, that deeper understanding began with time spent in Haiti. The daughter of two public health doctors, she grew up in a Haitian hospital named for Nobel laureate Albert Schweitzer and was steeped in his philosophy of reverence for life.

“Hope is renewed each time that you see a person you know, who is deeply involved in the struggle of life, helping another person,” Schweitzer wrote. “You are the unaffected witness and must agree that there is hope for mankind. And those who are not so tied down to the struggle for existence – who are freer – must give the example of service.”

Medical students hope to raise funds for return trip to Haiti
Gibson and Fernandez hope that other students will have the opportunity to travel to Haiti with Project Medishare. They are talking about another trip in December. The coming months will bring more fundraising – the first trip cost about $26,000 for nine students, four doctors and three interpreters. That team treated more than 600 patients.