Getting what you GIVE:
Making A Difference Through
Medical Volunteering
As a medical professional you are specially qualified to make
a significant and important difference in the lives of others.
wo of Pindara’s much loved team
members - Paediatric Anaesthetist Dr
Sarah Goetz and Post Anaesthesia Care
T
Unit Clinical Facilitator Courtney Allan have
been using their skills to do just that – helping
to change the lives of children and young people
across the globe by volunteering with medical
charities Operation Smile and Interplast.
Operation Smile is a large international charity,
undertaking a mission somewhere in the world
every week. Focusing mainly on repairing
cleft lips and palates, they have more recently
extended their services to include dental and
burns related issues.
Interplast is an Australian organisation run
with the Australian and New Zealand College
of Surgeons which focuses on paediatric
craniofacial and reconstructive burns surgery.
Interplast also has a strong focus on education –
training local doctors and nurses in best practice
and new techniques.
Both Courtney and Sarah have been on
numerous missions, travelling to some of
the world’s most remote and underprivileged
communities, where access to even the most
basic of health care is a luxury.
Missions run for between seven to 14 days,
unfolding at break neck speed in order to get set-up,
screen and prioritise patients, operate, review
and pack down. It is not unusual for teams to see
500 plus patients and operate on around 250.
Sarah and Courtney agree that while on a mission
you have to work hard and give a lot of yourself,
but what you get back in return is far greater.
Courtney recalls a heart-warming story from a
trip to Laos with Operation Smile.
“One story that stands out in my mind was on the
mission to Laos. There was a 60 year old father
and his two children who came to see us. They
all had cleft lips, the father in particular had a
large bilateral cleft, a significant deformity.
“We told him we would be able to operate on his
children, but that it would be unlikely we would
be able to operate on him as children are the
priority. All the medical staff really felt for him
though and we were determined to do what we
could. He had lived with this cleft his whole life
and even had to wear a scarf over half his face
every day to hide the lip.
“It came to the end of the day in theatre, we had
some time and we were able to get him in and
repair the lip, but ended up having to perform the
surgery with only local anaesthetic – which was
pretty significant.
“Kids often don’t give you much of a reaction
after surgery, but when this man saw his lip
repaired for the first time, he couldn’t believe it!
He burst into tears and started hugging everyone.
All the staff were in tears too. It was so amazing
to help someone who had lived with this kind of
issue their whole life. It changes your life too,”
Courtney said.
While there is much elation throughout a mission
there are also difficulties that can test your mettle
and which volunteers must overcome.
“The hardest part is leaving patients behind,”
Sarah said.
“You only have so much time, and while
everyone makes a huge effort and works
together to treat as many people as possible,
there are still those who miss out or who you
could still do more for; and leaving them behind
is the hardest thing.
“On a trip to Sumba in Indonesia, we were
working on a lot of burn contractures and these
cases often require multiple surgeries. We
had planned to return the following year but
unfortunately the government had closed the
area and were not letting anyone in. I remember
there was a particular patient there, a girl of only
three who had suffered a bad burn when she was
one and her foot had fused to her thigh, meaning
she had never learned to walk. We were able to
release the leg but there was still more to do.
When we learned we couldn’t return to help her,
it was very hard,” Sarah said.
One of the hardest things Courtney faced was
when she returned from her first few trips was
reverse culture shock.
“At first it was really confronting – the shock of
how much they don’t have, how much we have,
and how wasteful we can be.
24 Pindara Magazine ISSUE 14 | 2018