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Vaccines - Facts and Practical Tips

understand Muslims and the issues they deal with in. the 21st century.

There are nearly three million nurses in the United States. You have, arguably, one of the greatest skill sets from which to serve God. Let me explain why I think that your role as a nurse is so important. And, I want to leave you with some examples and opportunities that will inspire and encourage you to consider serving God with your nursing skills on an even greater level! Nurses are the health workforce. Nurses and midwives account for nearly fifty percent of the health workforce. World Health Organization reports that of the 43.5 million health workers in the world, it is estimated that 20.7 million are nurses and midwives. Wow. This is a lot of people with an amazing set of skills to help with needs around the entire world.  Nurses are trusted. According to Gallup, for the eighteenth year in a row, Americans rate the honesty and ethics of nurses highest among a list of professions that Gallup asks U.S. adults to assess annually. Currently, 85 percent of Americans say nurses' honesty and ethical standards are "very high" or "high”. Not only are there many nurses around the world, but your role is also one of the most trusted among healthcare professionals. Imagine the possibilities with your experience and care! With that kind of trust, ability, and knowledge, nurses make the perfect candidates for serving God on nursing mission trips! Nurses care.  According to the National Institutes of Health, nursing is a caring profession. You understand that. My guess is, that’s why you do what you do—you care. Caring means you have empathy for and connection with the people you serve. The core of nursing values that are essential to the profession includes human dignity, integrity, autonomy, justice, and altruism. The core values of serving on a nursing mission trip line up with those core values of the nursing profession perfectly. While serving on the mission field, we must always affirm the dignity of the people we are working with. The people we work with are humans that have dignity. We are there to work alongside them.  Our integrity is on the line each time we work in the mission field as those we are serving will be looking at us and watching how we live. Autonomy affirms the ideal that we do not come to “save” people, but that we are working together with them in order to teach, train, and share the good news of the gospel.  Justice means that we do not just work with a certain subset of people, but that we look toward the equitable distribution of services and resources across all people. All of these characteristics are embodied in altruism, which is defined as the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others.  What great attributes to possess as a person and provider. You care more than most people. Hello! You’re trusted and you care. That’s a nice combination for loving God and serving others.   Nursing mission trips: an example. Nurses Christian Fellowship USA is one great example of using your role and skills as a nurse to serve God. Nurses Christian Fellowship USA is a ministry of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA and has been since 1948. It’s a professional and ministry organization equipping nursing students, nurses, and nurse educators to follow Jesus in healthcare.  This ministry reaches the largest group of healthcare providers in the world. Nurses Christian Fellowship USA is about relationships—with God, with colleagues, and with those they serve. Be sure to check them out. They have local groups and regular national meetings so as to provide connection, prayer, and application of the Bible to nursing. Nursing mission trips: a story. Let me leave you with one nursing and missions story. The following is just a snippet from one nurse serving in missions:  Imagine you’re a nurse at a clinic in a remote village in Papua New Guinea (PNG). After nursing college, you move into a far-off village you’ve never seen before. If you’re fortunate, there is a cell tower nearby and you have cell coverage. If not, you might have a 2-way radio for communications. You see patients from 8AM to 6PM with no breaks. Your staff is minimal, and your clinic is undersupplied with meds and vaccines. You’re tasked to meet the needs of the people in your area, despite poor lighting in your clinic and no sheets on the beds, lacking basic equipment such as refrigerators, oxygen tanks, and scales. When you leave for the day, desperate patients come to your home. Trauma and death are common….you can read the full nursing missions story. Just imagine how much help this nurse and the team are helping the people in PNG. They are literally saving lives. Now, imagine the needs around the world for your experience, skills, and care.  Nurses make up the world of health care. Nurses are the most trusted role in health care. Nurses simply care. This makes your role as a nurse one of the most needed roles when it comes to missions. Nurses will always be an invaluable member of a mission trip team - whether long-term or short-term. A nurse brings cohesiveness, professionalism, and integrity to the table. May God raise up many more nurses who will be encouraged to serve God through their role, experience, and skills to bring even more people to Him.  Find more information on serving, stories, jobs, groups, and discussions about nursing and missions.

Missionaries and other overseas Christian workers are subject to unique stressors, and providing proper support for this group requires a commitment from sending organizations. Despite the fact that in the past mental health problems in missions have been neglected, missions organizations have developed an increasing capacity for supporting missionaries. This presentation describes best practices for behavioral health support. We will discuss how the organizations we have worked with have reduced stigmatization, developed sound procedures for evaluating, supporting, and triaging missionaries and their families who develop psychiatric problems. We will review current medical thinking about resilience, compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization, and burnout and discuss how these concepts can be used to inform medical support for expatriate Christian workers. (This is Part 1 of a 2 part presentation)

Christian healthcare professionals working in cross-cultural settings need to understand medical anthropology from a perspective that goes beyond the classical "knowledge-attitudes-practices" model. This session will cover essential questions about how people of different backgrounds can understand the body, illness, health and healing as well as highlight some of the challenges in walking the line between "cultural relativism" and Biblical truths.

One of the great tensions in modern medical missions is short-term trips and long-term service. There are varying opinions on whether one is better than another and whether or not there is value or harm in many short-term trips. What I mean is, what’s more valuable to the people you’re serving? Occupational Therapy (OT) is an arm of healthcare that needs to be carefully evaluated in this light because providing OT services in the short-term may or may not be the best help over the long term. Let’s look at what OT is, why it’s important, how it can be helpful, and how you can use your gifts properly to serve others in the best ways.  What is Occupational Therapy? The American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) states, “occupational therapy services are provided for habilitation, rehabilitation, and the promotion of health and wellness to those who have or are at risk for developing an illness, injury, disease, disorder, condition, impairment, disability, activity limitation, or participation restriction”. Why is Occupational Therapy important? Providing occupational therapy services in developing countries requires sensitivity to the cultural and health conditions of the host country. This is vital to know because, in the United States, we understand occupational therapists change lives all of the time. We know they make a difference in children’s lives too—helping with everything from developmental delays, to Autism, to Down syndrome.  OT’s are vital in ensuring people are able to participate in their daily routines. OT’s help hurting people physically function and learn to engage in life despite difficulties. Make no mistake about it, occupational therapy is vital. Therefore, you, the OT, are needed to serve using your gifts and skill all over the globe. But, OT must be done with intention and a desire to empower indigenous people, aware of the limitations and conditions of the host country’s resources. What can Occupational Therapy (OT) do to help people?  Many occupational therapists would love to use their skills in low-resource settings, but this requires great care and research before jumping in. There are questions about whether the Western biomedical model is appropriate in settings where primary health care is inadequate and specialized services would only reach a privileged few. This brings us to some things to be aware of in serving others through occupational therapy.  What does the Occupational Therapist (OT) need to be aware of in serving? We need to be aware of a sustainable plan of action to start. We need to first look at the healthcare system as a whole. Therapists should be looking for ways in which all members of society can receive healthcare and be looking for the ability of the system to continue the therapy services. This may be done by training workers in impoverished areas or providing educational opportunities for indigenous people that might study to become an OT. How can the Occupational Therapist (OT) get started in serving others?  Let’s look at four areas where you can get started with occupational therapy. Strategy #1 Assess One important thing is to look at what the country or region actually needs. OT services in the United States may look different than OT services in a different country.  One strategy is to develop a comprehensive rehabilitation plan that encompasses all aspects of health rather than just looking at OT services. For long-term service, this might include a team of providers, rather than just an Occupational Therapist. In short-term trips, this might mean training local physicians or Christian health workers in all aspects of rehabilitation. Honestly, the best approach is for occupational therapy consultants to assess the need for services in a particular country. To start, at least three areas must be assessed: 1) patterns of morbidity and mortality; 2) patterns of health care distribution; and 3) the ability to sustain occupational therapy services. Strategy #2: Evaluate  Next, it’s time to evaluate the patterns of health care distribution. This requires the OT to truly assess needs in the area. You must be sure you get past the centers which are already, in many ways, established. In many countries, this means going beyond the urban areas into rural areas. These rural areas need all of the help they can get, in most cases. You can serve them well by coming alongside them and helping provide a more balanced approach with a more full range of equipment and services where possible. The important thing is that you don’t evaluate on your own and only from a Western perspective, but alongside the indigenous people of that area. Strategy #3: Aid After you’ve assessed and evaluated the area you’re looking to serve, it’s time to look at the strategies related to the development of OT in said area. I've seen many strategies that can ultimately aid the development of occupational therapy in countries that need more resources. For example, aid may mean 1) documenting the actual needs around the region, 2) helping teach and train on the importance of a plan for increasing help in the area, 3) considering and prioritizing needs for the region, and finally, 4) writing down and creating a process around teaching and training for future growth and help in the area.  Strategy #4: Plan You don’t have to have a perfect plan. You just have to start with a plan. Your plan should include defining what rehab and services look like. What’s the end-goal for services? What does success in an area look like? It’s vital you the missionary work that serves the needs of the people in the area you’re serving with the people you are serving. This is boots-on-the-ground data you’re looking for.  Any decent plan should include defining the needs and how best to get at helping fix those needs. Who are the points of contact for the area? What are the specialties and/or specialists that need to be contacted within the region so the person has the best overall care? While there will not be a one size fits all approach and what works in the United States will probably not work in the area you’re serving. But, it’s vital you work to do for one what you would wish to do for all. We’ve reviewed what OT is, why it’s important, how it can be helpful, and how you can use your gifts properly to serve others best. If God is calling you to serve others through OT, my encouragement to you is to review this post to help get you started down the right path to serving well. 

Strategic indigenous medical training to impact the Church Planting Movement and the Kingdom of Heaven.

Learn about GMH (Global Mental Health) and resources for integrating this into your general medical and global health practices - through clinical vignettes from our practice in LMICs.

Let me tell you about a medical missionary you have probably never heard about. But, you should know about this missionary. My sincere hope is that reading about this woman’s life will encourage, challenge, and inspire you to take your experience, skills, and passions and use them for God and others like this woman.  Remember, medical missions is constantly changing. In a recent post, we covered the history of medical missions. The enterprise of medical missions has brought physical, emotional, and spiritual health to the world—and opened the doors for the gospel in countless countries.  Medical missions is the term used for Christian missionary endeavors that involve the administration of any kind of medical treatment. Medical missions connects your skills with your calling. We see from reviewing Scripture, in the New Testament for example, that Jesus called for His disciples to heal the sick and serve the poor. He also calls them to "make disciples of all nations". In trying to obey Jesus’ commands, Jesus called for His disciples to heal the sick and serve the poor. He also calls them to "make disciples of all nations". As someone who works in healthcare, your life should be spent doing those exact things. You heal the sick, you serve the poor, and you make disciples of all nations. It's what being a medical missionary is all about.  There are so many avenues for missionary work. We’ve talked before about some popular ways many missionaries serve God. We’ve covered short-term, long-term, marketplace, domestic, international, and medical education as some of the top ways believers find practical avenues to serve God.  Today we want to take you back in history to look at a woman who served as a medical missionary in India. Her name is Dr. Ida Sophia Scudder.  She was born into a medical missionary family in India in 1870. Her grandparents, her father (and seven brothers) were all medical missionaries in India. She went to school in the US at the Northfield Seminary in Massachusetts, then came back to India to visit her parents. She didn’t want to be a missionary. In fact, one article reads that she, “determined never to become one of 'those missionary Scudders'.” But, one evening while she was in India, she witnessed three women die during childbirth because there were no doctors available to women. This happened in 1894. She would go on to call that situation her, “three knocks in the night.” During those days, there were no gynecologists or women practitioners at all, so women were not getting care. She went back to the US and went to Cornell Medical College in New York City, and was part of the first class that accepted women. She returned to India and started a small practice for women in Vellore. Shortly after she returned, her father died, but she treated over 5,000 patients in just two short years. In 1902, Dr. Scudder started the Mary Taber Schell Hospital in Vellore. She also began to realize that she couldn’t serve all the women of India alone, so she started a medical school for women only. During the first year, she had 151 applicants to her school. Eventually, the school became co-educational so that she could get the support of more churches in the United States.  Mahatma Gandhi visited her school in 1928. She went on to raise millions of dollars for the school and hospital. The Vellore Christian Medical Center has been one of the largest Christian hospitals in the world. Today, the Christian Medical College (CMC) in Vellore still honors Dr. Ida Scudder and her determination to serve populations of people that were not being served. According to the website “One of the top-ranked educational, healthcare and research institutes in the country. CMC’s network of primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary care teaching hospitals spread across six campuses in and around Vellore, is, together, a 3,000-bedded multi-specialty medical institution of international fame. The Christian Medical College Vellore, located in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, is an unaided minority educational institution established in the year 1900. Started as a single-bedded clinic, under the leadership of Dr. Ida Sophia Scudder, the only daughter of second-generation American missionaries, it grew into a full-fledged medical college imparting education in medical, nursing and allied health sciences.”  I encouraged you recently to keep the continual pursuit of a lifestyle of missional living. A missional life isn’t something we wait to do “one day”. No, the Great Commission tells us to “Go” and we understand this means you live your calling “as you are going.”  In case you missed my last post, I encourage you to, every day, take another intentional next step toward your own mission-focused life. Is that serving at your church? Is that networking and connecting with someone in your field? Is it the next step in education or training? Do it! Take that next baby step.  Review Dr. Scudder’s life and learn from her. Get on a mission with God. God’s will is that we serve Him and love others. It’s that simple and complex! Dr. Scudder’s life is an example and an inspiration to us all. She is one woman who didn’t even think she wanted to be a missionary. But, over her years of faithfully serving God and loving others, she has changed the healthcare system of South India forever. Scudder dedicated her life to the challenges of Indian women and the fight against bubonic plague, cholera, and leprosy. I hope that looking in detail at Dr. Scudders’ life will encourage and inspire you to press on in your calling to God. Often, you can get lost in the daily grind and forget the bigger picture of your life. I hope that in reviewing Ira’s life, you’ve been encouraged and inspired to live out your calling. Like Ira, let’s aim to live out our faith with our entire lives.

Sending organizations spend tens of millions of dollars each year sending clinicians and support staff overseas. They invest very little in comparison on the leaders who are essential to preventing their burnout. Competent and compassionate administrative leaders are not only essential for developing and sustaining resilient healthcare and ministry teams; they also shepherd the systems that optimize human, technological and financial resources and prevent waste of resources and harm to patients. Despite its necessity, healthcare leadership and management training often scarce in many of the world’s most marginalized places. In this presentation, Anderson makes a case for the necessity of building leadership capacity and introduces practical tools that help address this training gap while building vibrant, sustainable mission teams.

How do I know if it's Sensory? Screenings and clinical observations to identify sensory processing delays.

If you are reading this blog, you probably have some kind of dream of being involved in Christian health ministries. Today, I want to encourage the work of the believer who doesn’t just aim to “someday” be a missionary but live out your calling in healthcare and missions every day of your life. In this post, I want to give you some encouragement and some practical tips for living out your calling. And, I hope to show you how you can live out your calling right now. As in, today! You don’t have to wait to live out your calling.  Allow me to give you some encouragement:  • I encourage you toward the continual pursuit of a lifestyle of missional living. Missional life isn’t something we wait to do “one day”. No, the Great Commission tells us to “Go” and we understand this means you live your calling “as you are going.”   • I encourage you to, every day, take another intentional next step toward your own mission-focused life. Is that serving at your church? Is that networking and connecting with someone in your field? Is that the next step in education or training? Do it! Take that next baby step.  • I encourage you to remember: God only gives us this one chance at life here on earth. We cannot waste it away on self-serving pleasures or the material goods that the media tells us we need. A life that stewards what God gives well is one that sacrifices, loves, and lives in extreme obedience. This kind of life doesn’t just live and eventually die, this kind of life makes a difference. We need to use this short time that God gives, with the abilities and resources we’ve been given to make a difference. • I encourage you to understand that God’s will for your life is not a mystery or a puzzle that we have to figure out. His will for your life is to glorify him in all that you do, whatever profession you choose, hobbies you participate in, the spouse you commit to, or the place you live. All of those things become a perimeter to the central force that underlies it all: to glorify him.  • I encourage you to know the will of God. Often, you might fixate on "What is God's will for my life?" Instead, you need to look at HOW God wants you to live. It’s vital that you know not just where you fit or how you can “find yourself.” No, you are called to a higher standard. You are called to align your will with God’s will. This takes knowing God through His Word. You must spend time knowing God so we can know what His will is—and then do it. I hope these few encouragements will help you press on in your calling to God. I also want to be sure you’re armed with a few practical ideas for how to live your calling out right now. I know, many times, it can feel like you have to wait to live out your calling. But, you don’t have to wait.  Here are practical ideas for living out your calling in Christian health ministries now:  Idea #1: Find a faith-based clinic where you can serve as needed. If you are still a student, offer to pray with patients at set times during the week.  Idea #2: Go on a short-term trip to learn from indigenous workers and long-term servants. Idea #3: Join a local chapter in your specialty. For example, connect with Christian Medical Dental Association in order to find opportunities to serve and a community of people with similar passions and interests.  One last reminder when it comes to what you can do right now to live out your calling. There are also very simple things you can do like caring for your neighbor, getting involved with your local church, school, or neighborhood groups. Doing these things now will allow you to love people in concrete ways, right where you are And, you’ll learn how you’re gifted and can best serve God through it all. Here’s what’s most important in all of this: I’ve heard it called serving with HEART. No matter what you do in your field of service, do it with heart:  Hospitality: Treat those you care for like they are visiting your house. Remember, part of your calling is loving people. This means you work to make every person comfortable and every space welcoming.  Empathy is vital in serving people. Take your time to get to know the person and who they are. You are called by God to empathize with everyone you come into contact with. People around you will know you are a believer by how you listen and care for them.  Attitude: My guess is you aren’t alone on your mission. You either have a team you work with or you will one day have a team to work with. Your attitude around those who you work with can lift them up or bring them down. Which will it be? Be someone folks want to be around. Respect: This takes listening to all around you and actually helping. No, the people you work with won’t get everything correct. But, they should still get your respect. People around you will know you follow God because of your respect for them  Time: Are you always late? Don’t be! Be on time to everything. Show up early if you can. This applies to a meeting or to the time you need to help a patient.  We’ve covered a lot in this post. I hope you’ve been encouraged and have found the practical tips you need to help you live out your calling. If you dream of being involved in Christian health ministries, be encouraged to serve where you are. Be the believer who doesn't simply aim to “someday” be a missionary, but be the person who lives out their calling in their job, especially if that’s healthcare, every day. All of us should aim to live out our faith with our careers, our time—our very lives.