Medicalmissions.com Podcast

Dentistry has a great opportunity to reach the least, the last and the lost for the needs are overwhelming and universal. I will use various countries to evaluate and discuss how to take advantage of different opportunities and situations that may be available. It is important for us to discuss and understand the government and the culture and what it entails to move forward on a venture into a closed or creative access country. How to work with national partners. Concerns with communication. How about a site visit. How to select a team and prepare them for such a great opportunity. Time for discussion and asking questions. Lets have some fun.

This lecture will help potential missionaries understand how God utilizes the church to accomplish his mission to the nations, differentiate between biblical and cultural understandings of calling, and discern their role in God's mission.

In recent years there has been a tsunami of healthcare volunteers going into the developing world; both faith-based and humanitarian. Recent estimates tell us that 29% of students enrolled in medical schools participate in some type of short-term global health project prior to graduation. Dental, nursing, and allied health schools are also beginning to follow suit. This workshop will review some of the guidelines for improving global health missions and what constitutes best evidence based practice in this area. The format of this workshop will be two talks by two mission leaders – one a sender and one a receiver. Both speakers will give positive and negative examples of short-term mission teams with long-term impact. The sender talk will be from Greg Seager RN the director of Christian Health Service Corps. The receiver talk will be by Dr. Jefferson McKenney missionary surgeon and founder of Loma De Luz Hospital in Honduras.

My wife, Lara, and I thought we knew a lot about missions before we went to Cambodia. We had both been journeying in missions for many years - I majored in anthropology, worked in a cross-cultural clinic, had been on several short-term trips, attended conferences and trainings, and advocated whenever we could for missions; we lived intentionally and missionally. Both of us knew that Cambodia would stretch our lives and our faith. What we did not realize was how much of that challenge originated from our own ideas and expectations of what it would be like.

This session will discuss ways to analyze future or current relationship for compatibility, ways to identify potential differences in five areas that affect their future or current marriage.This session will also give tools to adapt and adjust to the difficulties participants may encounter.

How can health care missions be done in urban settings, especially in government owned facilities? This breakout session seeks to address this questions. Ministry can be done in and through government hospitals and institutions by connecting with healthcare personnel, sharing the gospel and discipling them and bringing them into healthy churches. This breakout session will give some insights and specifics into how to do this.

Can a church in a poor and vulnerable community run a sustainable healthcare ministry in her community? Yes, if the church and short term medical team are well prepared for ministry. Here are the steps we have taken to enable local churches run sustainable healthcare ministries as result of short term medical teams.

there are more unreached today than there were last year when we met at GMHC. 21 million more to be precise. We are going backwards in our task to complete the great commission and that is not OK. Meanwhile our traditional missions model has sidelined over 99% of Jesus followers who look at the model and do not see a fit. Yet God has made everyone for His purposes and uniquely talented them to fulfill the purposes. Those who are talented in the medical profession, who are passionate about it and believe they were created to do it have been told they have to leave that and do something different, (oh and raise support to do it) or simply do it on a short term mission trip or even as someone told me last year at GMHC, 'forget your specialty and come do general health care'. We will continue to go backwards unless we engage the whole body of Christ and engage them wholly. In other words send them out to be who God has created them to be. As GP's, Surgeons, Radiologists, Dentists, Pediatricians, Nurse

Different areas of the world provide the medical missionary with various opportunities and challenges. We will examine results of a survey recently published in the Christian Journal of Global Health to assess how certain health care providers may take advantage of these unique characteristics to engage in profitable and satisfying ministry.

Those attending this session will be able to describe the spread of emerging and re-emerging vector-borne viral illnesses. They will also be able to understand treatment and currently available diagnostic tests.

This session will focus on health and safety for medical missionaries. Including being able to describe previous outbreaks among missionary travelers and identify resources for safe and healthy travel preparation.

American health care missionaries outside the US need to keep their US health care licenses current in order to practice in some countries, as well as they desire to keep abreast of the latest developments in their field. This need and desire requires a significant amount of continuing education, often 40 hours every two years, which is difficult to achieve when home in the US on a furlough. The Christian Medical Dental Association has over 30 years of annual meeting experiences providing continuing education to dentists, physicians and other health care workers through their Continuing Medical Dental Education (CMDE) Commission.

This session will describe the unique roles that women have in medical missions and the challenges faced by women in the international missions context.

Why do Christians suffer? There are almost as many answers and opinions about suffering as there are Christians. To some suffering is just part of living in a fallen world. It is to be avoided if at all possible and, if necessary, to be endured with Jesus’ help until we escape this life and get to heaven. Others may think it is all from the Devil. Others believe the primary source is personal sin or the sin of others. Some believe it is from a lack of faith and if we just had more faith suffering would not come. There is some truth in each of these perspectives of course but they are not the whole story.Anyone following Jesus will experience suffering at some point in their lives including those who abandon themselves to follow him in mission anywhere in the world. This seminar will look at what the Bible teaches about suffering and discover what it teaches about the role of suffering in our lives, how God uses it to fulfill his purposes for us and how it prepares us to be more effective missionaries and serv

The topic of leadership and conflict management is not typically taught in professional schools but it is present in both group and work environments, including the mission field. In many situations, the medical professional because of their learned status becomes the leader but they do not have the skills to take on this role. This session will provide the participants with some of the skills and understanding needed to be successful leaders in their environments of practice.

The command "fear not" or "be not afraid" occurs more than a hundred times in the Bible, including many times from the mouth of Jesus. The fear of the LORD is healthy, but our Enemy uses fear as a principal weapons to hinder Christian obedience and fruitfulness. Courage is not the absence of fear, but boldness to proceed in obedience despite fear--because of faith in the Person and promises of God.

Long-term impact in health-related missions from a short-term team must consider both long-term and short-term goals and objectives. Perhaps surprisingly, some or many of the long-term impact might not be directly related to healthcare! Understanding the potential long-term goals and objectives requires the short-term team to explore coordinated interaction between communities, local leaders, government, and technical experts. This workshop will identify several models for interacting where short-term healthcare workers can explore how to have a lasting long-term impact, as well as highlighting pitfalls to be avoided.

CARING ACROSS CULTURESDR. M. KAMALINI KUMAR PhD. RN.Practices and beliefs that center around illness, suffering, death and bereavement in patients from various ethnic backgrounds and belief systems can create many challenges for health care professionals. These beliefs also influence the way patients perceive the quality of care they receive. Research has shown that caregivers who are sensitive to the cultural and belief systems of patients can help not only to reduce their stress, but increase the compliance and satisfaction with the care they receive. Besides this obvious understanding of culture, there is the culture of the times we now live in. Which culture should we address and engage in? The traditional values of Christianity and the church or the contemporary culture of social reform, less binding commitments and sexual freedom of all kinds? We must grapple with these issues with wisdom and insight. Knowing and remembering every person's cultural practices is a virtual impossibility, but understa

This is a practical time of instruction for gait training of patients at all levels including from the use of assitive dvices to functional traing for advance gait and balance

Developing a network among like-minded international medical training programs is an important aspect of successfully utilizing medical education as a missions strategy.