Physicians Course
Missionary Medicine for Physicians and Mid-level Practitioners
This course helps prepare physicians and mid-level practitioners, who already have a thorough understanding of medical diagnosis and treatment principles, to work in third world and tropical conditions where sophisticated instrumentation and lab tests are not available.
The training consists of detailed presentations of the most common diseases seen in third world settings and emphasizes diagnosis and treatment. This would include not only the major killers like malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, but also many other tropical diseases and conditions not usually seen in western medicine. Other topics such as critical childbirth issues, international drug options, orthopedics and complications of malnutrition and anemia will also be discussed.
The course utilizes the two-volume textbook, Village Medical Manual by Dr. Mary Vanderkooi, a tropical disease specialist doing medical missions for Equip in Ethiopia. In addition to having extensive sections on individual diseases, medications, differential charts and regional differences, the text also contains a brilliantly crafted diagnostic algorithm, which is designed for use in the field. Learning to properly use the algorithm will be one of the objectives of the course and will be achieved by each student completing a number of individual case studies.