Medical mission trips may not help patients in host countries

When medical school students go on short-term service trips to developing nations, it is generally agreed to be good for the students.

They may learn about diseases they might not see in the United States, and they can develop greater cultural sensitivity.

But are such trips good for the people in the host countries?

On that score, there is room for improvement, writes the University of Delaware's Melissa K. Melby, lead author of a new review in the journal Academic Medicine.

If medical mission trips are not well designed, they may lead local patients and caregivers to become reliant on follow-up visits, rather than building local capacity for long-term care.

And while a surgery perfomed on such a trip may fix the immediate problem, what happens if an infection or other complication arises after the U.S. visitors have gone home?

Melby, an assistant professor of anthropology at Delaware, and her co-authors propose several safeguards.

Among them:

- Medical missions should be "embedded within established, community-led efforts."

- Such trips also should be bidirectional, allowing clinicians from developing countries to visit the United States.

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