2014泰國短期醫療宣教團服務感想-實習醫學生 Sarah Liu
I’m very grateful I had the opportunity to take part in the northern Thailand medical mission this Christmas alongside the staff of Changhua Christian Hospital.
Volunteering aboard has always been on my list of things to do for two reasons， 1) there’s no feeling quite like the satisfaction I get from helping people in need. And 2) I have always wanted to travel to rural areas around the world to explore. In July， I was supposed to volunteer in Ghana for 10 days， but due to the Ebola virus situation in Africa， I was unable to make the trip. But this Christmas， taking part in the northern Thailand medical mi
ssion has made my dream come true.
Firstly I would like to say it has been such a pleasure working with staff from Changhua Christian Hospital and also staff members from Overbrook Hospital. I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know everyone， and I am so blessed to be in a team composed of such wonderful people.
Mobile Clinics
I have learnt so much and gained so much from the 4 mobile clinic days. It was an amazing experience to explore the rural parts of Chiangrai， meeting the friendly locals and helping local residents.
I am currently in my 4th year at King’s college London， and in the course so far I have only performed around 12-13 extractions in my whole time at King’s.
But here at the mobile clinics， I am performing around 10 extractions per day on some of the clinic days.
This is an incredible experience for me as it has helped me improve my technique and speed significantly in terms of extractions. And when I had difficulties with extractions， there was always a qualified dentist available to help me and teach me how to solve the problem.
Apart from extractions for adults， I also performed my first extractions on children in the mobile clinics. This year at King’s I have just started pediatric dentistry， and treating children in Chiangrai at the mobile clinics has again helped me improve my skills in terms of techniques used when treating children and also communicating with children.
However， on one of the mobile clinic days， when we were packing up the equiptment， a few more patient arrived， and they were told the clinic was closed and turned away from treatment. And this made me feel uncomfortable as a health professional; our goal here is to help people in need， and even though we have packed the chairs away， I feel we could have easily performed an extraction in one of the waiting chairs， as we often do when it is a busy day and two of us will work in the dental chairs， and one of us will work with a patient in the waiting chair. So in my opinion I feel we could have done more for those individuals.
Dentistry aside， because our team is composed of professionals from a wide range of specialties， from pediatrics to chinese medicine. I also got to see how other medical specialists work during the mobile clinics， I found this experience thoroughly interesting， because it’s not often that I get to see other doctors at work， doing something that is very different from us. Especially the chinese medicine doctors， during their break they will talk to us about acupuncture and chinese medicine， and they even performed acupuncture on me and Jessica on one occasion， and I found this topic fascinating and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Tourism
This was my first time in Thailand， so I was excited to visit the country. When I found out that during the weekend， we get to do a bit of tourism and visit the temples the parks and ride elephants too， this was the icing on top of the cake， and made the whole trip an absolutely perfect experience.
We visited the black and the white temples， they were so beautiful and it was an amazing experience to explore these famous tourism sites.
We also visited the flower park， the golden triangle and the opium museum. But my favorite experience has to be visiting the elephant park and riding elephants! They were adorable and this was an unforgettable experience!