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JAINA CONVENTION 2011
"Live and Help Live"
"One Step at a Time" Time" - Volunteering in India Kinjal shah
Kinjal Shah, is a fourth year medical student She has grown up in a household that stressed the importnace of giving back to those that are less fortunate than her. Her parents have fostered values that include having compassion towards all human beings. This trip is her small step in that direction. UTHSC, College of Medicine, Memphis TN. KinjalShahMD@gmail.com; 901-270-6420
Food for thought: The answer to our woes lies within us... all we need is a helping hand. I would like to encourage you, whatever age you may be, to find creative ways of offering that helping hand to someone in need. -Kinjal Shah
The theme of our Jaina convention this year is "Live and Help Live." What does this mean to me? How do I, as a third year medical student, apply that to my life? Well, first off, for anyone going through medical school, you can sympathize with me as you realize the number of sleepless nights that go into surviving third year. Then why should I find time to helpout others, while I'm the one in need?! Well, because it is important to see past me and my needs.
If we look up, we will find plenty of people in better financial, social, economical and personal circumstances. But the same is also true if we look at those less fortunate than us. It is our job as human beings and as Jains, to contribute to the betterment of our society and it's beings. Having said that, I am too impatient to wait until I have finished medical school or until I have finished my residency, or until I am financially stable, to start contributing to my society! To that end, I took a month to volunteer at various medical and surgical camps across Gujarat.
We live in an increasingly mobile society, which lends to the transfer of disease across oceans. I want to be competent in providing care for my patients, weather it is treating the neighbor next door or a patient half way across the world. I wanted to see how healthcare is delivered in India and decided to spend a month there this January. My objective for this trip was to challenge, encourage, and inspire myself to think more clearly about how
cultural, social and economical issues impact the delivery of health care in India. I know this elective will have a profound impact on my future role as a physician as I will be forced to confront the reality of diseases in a resource limited society.
First on our agenda: Bidada- a small village in Kutch, Gujarat. The Bidada experience was the brain, heart and soul of my rotation in India. First of all, for me as a medical student to witness such a well organized medical and surgical camp on such a large scale was astounding. The specialties included, but were not limited to, Urology, GI, ENT, Dermatology, Rheumatology, Oncology, Gen Surgery and even Vision and Dental Care; a similar panel existed for the pediatric population. The 37th annual Bidada Camp in January, 2011 lasted for 22 days and provided health care related services to about twenty thousand patients! That is a mindboggling figure! Bidada satisfied my intellectual curiosity as I saw "zebra" cases as Duchene's such Muscular Dystrophy, Pustular Psoriasis, and Rubella associated Congenital Cataracts and Heart Disease.
It can be easy for a medical student to get lost in the crowd and overlooked, especially when dealing with such high patient volume. Such was not the case at all in Bidada. The volunteering physicians were eager to teach us medical students- our presence was acknowledged and in fact very welcomed. I worked side by side with a group of medical students from Mumbai, seeking out interesting cases and forming a differential diagnosis. In this process of sharing medical knowledge, we all became very good friends. This time spent together learning, traveling and occasionally goofing around has laid the bases for what I hope is the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
After Bidada, we headed for the 5th annual Surgical Camp at Kalidas Hospital in Vyara,
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