The Three Objectives of Mission to Heal : Objective Two
Mission to Heal has three objectives:
- Provide surgical operations and medical care to those who need it, who have limited or no access to it, and who cannot afford it.
- Equip medical professionals with the heart and hands to function in needy and poorly-resourced conditions.
- Equip locals to provide the medical care so that the community attains a greater degree of self-sufficiency.
Last week, our blog was about Objective #1: Provide surgical operations and medical care to those who need it, who have limited or no access to it, and who cannot afford it.
Objective #1 is about healing.
Next up?
Objective #2. Equip medical professionals with the heart and hands to function in needy and poorly-resourced conditions.
This objective is about engaging medical professionals in transformational learning. Learning that changes the perspective, the character, and the lives of those engaged in it.
Those involved in Mission to Heal are advocates for global surgery and experts in mobile surgical units. They are also educators, serving the next generation of global healthcare professionals. Both in the Western and developing worlds. Mission to Heal believes that healthcare students, both undergraduate and graduate, must be prepared early and often to care for a much wider patient population – and across a diverse spectrum of cultures, socioeconomic conditions, and technological capacities.
Dr. Geelhoed has been teaching in a university setting – and in the field – for more than 40 years. And he never misses an opportunity to share and spread knowledge to those around him. Here’s a testimony from a medical student who came across the M2H team on the island of Palawan in the Philippines:
“Jou and I are both final year medical students from Sydney, Australia who bumped into the M2H team by chance during our medical electives at Palawan Baptist Hospital. We were fortunate enough to meet Dr. Glenn and his team of pre-med students taking their mobile surgical unit around the Philippines to provide minor to life-saving surgeries to the underprivileged. While we were there the surgical unit was held up by customs, however, Glenn did not waste a second and spent the unanticipated downtime sharing his vast medical knowledge in a series of impromptu lectures that rivaled our entire 4 years of didactic medical education! We witnessed the application of medicine in its purest Hippocratic form, the indiscriminate healing of the sick regardless of race, sex, or socioeconomic status, as we sat in on the clinics, surgeries and medical missions. It was truly inspirational to meet a medical professor uncorrupted by the typical cynicism, politics and fiscal greed entwined all too commonly within a lengthy medical career.” (Clement Chao)
After researching the effects of M2H missions on his students, Dr. Geelhoed, in a 2009 dissertation, concluded the following:
“Almost all of the participants reported changes characteristic of transformational learning brought about through encounters with developing world patients, and most qualified this changes…as profound, life-changing experiences.”
Transformational learning with Mission to Heal results from:
- Experiencing profoundly different environments
- Challenging long-held beliefs, values, and habits
- Accomplishing feats of service, sacrifice, and skill never before imagined, and
- Discovering meaning, purpose, and motivation for a lifetime.
Objective #1 is about healing.
And Objective #2?
Objective #2 is about transformational learning.
