Last February, Ruth Bennie, MD '81, packed forty pounds of paperwork, resuscitation dummies and a few clothes and boarded a plane for Malaysia. This wasn't her first trip; she knew what to expect.
She would be teaching a two-week class in Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) to a group of medical missionaries hungry for information and updates on advances in medicine. Her schedule would be hectic, but the experience would be re-warding, both professionally and personally. That's why she and many other IUSM faculty participate in a continuing medical education course for medical missionaries. The two-week program is offered once each year, rotating between Malaysia and Kenya. For some medical missionaries it is their only opportunity to visit with colleagues and learn what's new in the field of medicine.
The program is sponsored by the Christian Medical and Dental Education (CMDE) Commis-sion of the Christian Medical and Dental Society. IUSM awards the continuing medical education credits for physicians. Dr. Bennie, who directs the ACLS lab at IUSM, has traveled twice to Malaysia and twice to Kenya to participate. The stories her students tell illustrate how important her teaching is.
One missionary in Thailand used his Advanced Cardiac Life Support training to save a member of his U.S. missionary board who was visiting when he had a heart attack. The man was then air-lifted to a hospital in Australia.
"Another missionary, a nurse in an Indonesia village, said she had to use her Advanced Life Support training to resuscitate her own child," Dr. Bennie reports. "Her baby apparently had SIDS and the woman had to resuscitate her on more than one occasion." Her child survived.
Another story comes even closer to home. IUSM graduate Betty Baum Treese, MD '74, was a missionary in Nepal. "She told me she had witnessed an auto accident within a week of completing the ACLS course," Dr. Bennie says. "She used what she learned to help the victims because she was the only one on the scene."
In remote areas and even in hospital settings where supplies are limited, missionary doctors are reliant on their training, knowledge and ability to make do. One of the doctors in Dr. Bennie's class last year in Kenya said that in the African hospital where he works, just to start an IV is considered resuscitation for patients who are dehydrated.
Dr. Bennie's course is taught over the lunch period because of the packed program schedule. However, she is on hand all day to assist her students as they practice for their exam. While she has little free time, the IUSM anesthesiologist says she leaves with a deep feeling of gratitude. "We are so lucky to live in the U.S.," she says.
Her roommate in the February program was a young missionary doctor from Nepal, whose responsibilities included teaching hygiene and sanitation to birth attendants, the Nepalese version of the midwife. The death rate for infants and mothers is staggering, in part due to the belief that the blood associated with birth is untouchable. Women are moved to the cowshed to deliver their babies, Dr. Bennie was told.
IUSM's connection with the missionary education program is a long one. Charles Kelley, MD, associate professor of medicine, served as academic dean of the program for twelve years and attended each of the programs from the course's inception in 1978 except the year when he was the IU anchor physician for the IUSM-Moi program in Kenya and couldn't travel to Malaysia. That year, David Van Reken, MD, clinical associate professor of pedia-trics, filled in as academic dean of CMDE. Last year Dr. Kelley handed the reins to Dr. Van Reken, who will head the program through 2005.
The first CMDE program for the missionaries was held in Liberia. Coincidentally, Dr. Van Reken was working as a medical missionary there and was asked to serve as host. The program was a hit, but the facilities and climate in Liberia were not, Dr. Van Reken recalls. The organizers began looking for another location.
No program was held in 1979, but in 1980 the CMDE program found a permanent home in Kenya, where it has been conducted every other year since. In 1981, missionaries in the Asian countries got their first program in Malaysia.
In addition to providing outstanding continuing medical education, the CMDE program is a networking opportunity for individuals who are isolated from their medical colleagues. It provides for an exchange of ideas on community health, specific diseases, dealing with government officials, and many other aspects of missionary work not covered in textbooks. Updates on technology, including computers and software to send e-mail and access the Internet, can be a lifeline for individuals in remote areas. No less important, the program offers a chance for physical and spiritual renewal, and personal counseling.
One-third of the courses in the two-week program focus on illnesses typical of the region, such as diarrhea in children or tuberculosis outbreaks, and community health and hospital administration. The rest of the coursework addresses state-of-the-art technology and medical advancements so that participants can continue their practice in the U.S.
It will not come as a surprise to those who know Drs. Van Reken and Kelley that they would be so involved in a program such as CMDE. Both have worked overseas previously - Dr. Kelley and his wife Lorraine Kelley, MD, were in the Peace Corp in Afghanistan from 1965-1967. Dr. Van Reken and his wife Ruth, a registered nurse, spent nearly ten years in Liberia. Drs. Van Reken and Kelley believe that students who spend some of their time in a Third World nation develop intangible aptitudes that cannot be duplicated elsewhere.
Over the years a number of IUSM faculty have taught in the program. Fred Rescorla, MD, is a frequent lecturer. Others who taught on their own time at their own expense include Dean Robert Holden, MD '63, Associate Dean Stephen Jay, MD '66, Margaret Watanabe, MD '86, William Storer, MD '64, Asok Antony, MD, Glen Lehman, MD, David Canal, MD '83, and Edward Liechty, MD '78.
"Part of the training at the IU School of Medicine is 'whole person' medicine, including such things as integrity, ethical standards, and personal and professional enrichment," Dr. Kelley says. "The faculty is concerned with those issues, so as a medical school we've become more value driven. As a whole, the faculty and students have become more responsive to the underserved.
"It's important to do," he continues. "I stand back and feel that I am in the company of princes and princesses who are doing incredible work."
"This is where I charge my batteries," Dr. Van Reken confirms. "You meet interesting people from different places. You say to yourself, 'there is some good going on out there'."
Medical mission work is a family tradition for Ruth Bennie, MD '81 (above). Her parents, Roy Maxson, MD '47, and Rebecca Maxson, an IU School of Nursing graduate, established the Medical Mission Support Fund in 1987 to encourage students to enter the medical mission field in areas needing health care. The fund makes and forgives student educational loans, supports travel of fourth-year medical students to medical missionary sites, and promotes medical mission service through information materials and guest speakers.