Medical Relief Trips...What's Missing? Exploring Ethical Issues and the Physician-Patient Relationship

摘要

This vivid description from a nonprofit organization's website presents some of the ideas that draw physician volunteers to participate in short-term international medical relief trips. A community with a desperate need for medical attention, an opportunity to provide relief when perhaps no one else will—in many cases, these motivations are what drew physicians to the field of medicine in the first place. American physicians' growing interest in global health is evident from the thousands of physicians who travel to developing countries for periods of several days to several months every year (Wolfberg, 2006). In fact, participating in three medical relief trips to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, as an undergraduate is what led me to pursue a career in medicine. However, even my limited experience working with volunteer medical teams has revealed the unexpected ethical issues that physicians must confront when they go abroad to provide medical relief.