Academic Education (AE)
Career/Personal Development (CPD)
Clinical/Preceptor Education (PE)
King Chung, PhD
Professor
Mass General Hospital Institute of Health Professions
Mass General Hospital Institute of Health Professions
Charlestown, Massachusetts
Disclosure(s): Maico: Other Research Support (Ongoing); MedRx: Other Research Support (Ongoing); Microsonics: Other Research Support (Ongoing); Oaktree: Other Research Support (Ongoing); Oticon: Research Grant (includes principal investigator, collaborator or consultant and pending grants as well as grants already received) (Terminated); ReSound: Other Research Support (Ongoing)
Global hearing health is an essential component of audiology education because ~80% of people with hearing loss live in low-to-middle income countries (LMICs), yet >90% of audiologists in the world live in high income countries. The preparations of humanitarian missions is an art and a science. Humanitarians not only need to establish connections in the visited country, but also need to prepare the mission participants before the trip. The purpose of this learning module is to share the experiences of preparing and leading multi-institutional and multi-national humanitarian mission teams to provide hearing services in foreign countries.
Summary:
The goals of this presentation are to help faculty or clinicians who want to lead humanitarian service trips and to establish a large professional network to further hearing health services around the world.
From Nov 2022 – Jun 2023, the lead presenter led three multi-institutional (3 US universities) and multi-national (3 foreign universities) humanitarian teams to Poland to provide hearing and vestibular services to Ukrainian refugees. Many lessons were learned during the preparation and execution of the trip activities. For example, different methods to raise funds to support student travel, how to prepare and arrange the equipment to be taken to the visited countries, pre-trip and during the trip calibration of the equipment, and how to ensure all the equipment are available when we need them.
In addition, pre-trip presentations on different aspects of visited countries are extremely important to prepare the mission participants so that they understand the health system, cultural practices, available resources, and what to expect in the visited countries. As multiple US and foreign institutes are involved in the process, it is also important to arrange activities for the mission attendees outside of work to get to know each other, to play together, and to build a strong team.
Further, the arrangements and expectations among the professors also need to be communicated and managed systematically. Examples will be drawn to explain the importance of observing safety protocols when traveling or staying in foreign countries.