I am so excited that our Global Health Elective is officially launching in March - just two short months away! It's amazing how much thought, passion, and groundwork has gone into planning what I would argue is the best (ABA accredited) Global Health Elective for anesthesiology residents out there.
Each trip will send two senior residents and one faculty member for two weeks to Punjab, India where, in the mornings, they will participate in the anesthetic care of patients at two hospitals (Sri Guru Ram Das Institute and Amandeep Hospital) working alongside local anesthesiologists. In the afternoons, the participants will receive an impressively rich primer in Global Health education. These are not lectures, but rather 'experiential didactics' meaning meeting with leaders in the fields of Global Health and Human Rights. Learning modules (environmental challenges to health, maternal-fetal health issues, drug addiction, to name a few) while certainly relevant to Punjab, are also more broadly applicable to understanding Global Health concerns worldwide.
Schedule for the first week of the Global Health Elective in India
The inaugural trip will be led by one of our neuroanesthesiologists, David Kopman, who traveled to Punjab with me in October on a scout trip. He will be accompanied by Pam Wendel and Jon Groden, two very excited and deserving CA-3's. The success of this elective would not be possible without Gunisha Kaur, another member of our CA-3 class whose vast experience working in Global Health/non profit/Human Rights spheres was the basis for the development of much of this program. After graduating, and completing a Masters in Medical Anthropology at Harvard this coming year, Dr. Kaur will return as faculty to Cornell to continue her work in Human Rights and Global Health as well as practice clinical anesthesiology.
There is a global anesthesia crisis and the ASA's committee on Global Humanitarian Outreach exists in order to improve the access to safe anesthesia worldwide. I believe that just as important as it is to teach our residents how to do an Anesthesia Machine check, it is equally important to have at least a basic understanding of anesthesiologists' potential role in international health within the interconnected world of the 21st century.
