The Scope E-NewsletterJune 2010 Surgery Resident Dr. Jones Gains Third-World Medical Experience

Matt Jones, MD, Surgery Resident, recently spent five months working at Baptist Medical Centre, a mission hospital, in northern Ghana. Having visited Ghana, located in West Africa, twice before, Dr. Jones decided to take advantage of the study abroad opportunity offered with his elective research year so that he could spend a meaningful amount of time practicing medicine in a third-world environment.

The mission hospital is a 200-bed facility that had only three doctors to treat the patients it draws from not only the north but also across Ghana, as well as neighboring Togo and Burkina Faso. The general surgeon, who served the hospital for more than 20 years, retired in September 2009, leaving only an obstetrics and gynecology physician and Dr. Jones to provide the hospital's surgical care.

The third year surgery resident said that he was able to complete a significant number of cases in Ghana, as well as participate in procedures no longer common in the U.S.

"Healthcare in northern Ghana is about 30 years behind," he said. "They do all of their hernia repairs with suture. In the states, we implant mesh using open or laparoscopic procedures. Only in rare cases do we use a simple suture technique, but there, we repair them all using the classic method. You really learn and understand the disease better because the procedure shows the anatomy better."

Dr. Jones said he also got to experience more continuity of care with patients.

"I would see them in the clinic, do their surgery, see them post-operation, take their stitches out, and if there was a complication, I would take care of them until they got better," he said. "As a resident, I don't often see the same patients in clinic that I operate on, and I rarely get to see them one or two months down the road. With skin grafts, which are common at the mission hospital, I would see patients a couple of weeks after they went home. I actually got to see that they got better and not just hope that they got better."

Megan Jones

While Dr. Jones worked at the hospital, his wife, Megan, was learning the local language, Mampruli, and became involved with efforts to open a public library. Upon returning to the U.S., Megan organized a book drive, partnering with the UT Graduate School of Medicine Preston Medical Library and First Baptist Church, Knoxville. Through the drive, approximately 5,000 books were donated, including medical textbooks, children's books, and books of all other genres.

"We hope to go back to Ghana one day," Dr. Jones said. "They are very welcoming people. Because the hospital has been there a long time, they have a lot of respect for visiting doctors and Americans in general. The longer you stay, the more you get to be friends with people. They are not just patients. Even though their world seems different, they are more like you than you think."