Use of volunteers to help launch a pediatric residency program in Laos
2001; Wiley; Volume: 7; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1046/j.1467-0658.2001.0123a.x
ISSN1467-0658
Autores Tópico(s)Migration, Health and Trauma
ResumoABSTRACT When five Lao physicians began their training in a 3‐year pediatric residency program in Laos in late 1997 it launched the first full‐time postgraduate medical education in the history of the country. For a poor country with 5 million people, half of them children, and only seven fully trained pediatricians, the prospect of soon adding five new pediatricians per year has substantial implications for child health. This residency grew out of 10 years of collaboration between the Lao Faculty of Medical Sciences and a wide‐ranging group of volunteer faculty members recruited from Case Western Reserve University and many other academic centres in the United States, Canada and Thailand, with the help of an all‐volunteer organization, Health Frontiers. The collaboration grew slowly, first with a pediatric curriculum for medical students, then a series of intensive short courses in pediatrics, and finally a government‐approved residency program, based on local health needs and consistent with international standards. This article reviews some of the academic, cultural, political, organizational and financial factors involved in the project. It suggests that the low‐cost, in‐country, volunteer‐assisted residency program being developed in Laos may emerge as an effective and affordable model for introducing postgraduate medical education in other less developed countries.
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