Our Global Health Shuk....by blogger Jonah Kreniske

It is almost cliché to note how easy it can in medical school be to become so focused on detail that you lose sight of the broader picture. As day follows day of lecture, and night follows night of clicking through Powerpoint slides and memorizing biochemical pathways, it is no challenge to forget why you learn what you learn. In fact, it is sometimes said you can get everything you need to know in the first two years of medical school from Wikipedia. As far as the USMLE is concerned, that may be true. Wherever you are in the world, whatever the quality of your education, there is a compendium of basic facts in a clearly delineated range of subjects that you must know by the end of your second year. These are the things you need to know in order to be granted your MD. I wonder though, is this all that we ought to know?

            For the past week, British trained Trauma surgeon Dr. Seema Biswas has guided my class through very full days of lectures and discussion on global health. Regaling us with tales from her time training the surgeons of Somaliland and her Red Cross relief missions, as well as from her current work at Ziv Hospital in Tzfat, Along with Dr. Biswas, we had the privilege of hearing from Dr. Wajdi Safadi, another Ziv trauma surgeon who has founded a clinic in his Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams.          

Dr. Safadi explained to us how he works 7 days a week, split between his clinic and his hospital position, in order to bring healthcare to his community, where there had been none. Dr. Biswas described working in South Africa, and her recent training in Germany for an upcoming mission with the Red Cross. The orientation culminated with a ‘Global Health Shuk,’ where we were invited to get started on our own work, by engaging with local leaders in community health and humanitarian projects.

The orientation is over now and we are on vacation. But our education continues. The slow rocking of an early morning train is carrying four of us up the coast, bleary eyed, as the sun rises overhead. Five days after beginning our course on global health, we have caught the 3am train to Akko, heading to Dr. Safadi’s clinic on Israel’s northern border. People sometimes ask why we would come all the way to Be’er Sheva, for medical school. The answer is because we are chasing after what we ought to know.  - Jonah Kreniske, blogger of the month