In our Neurological
Conditions class this past year, Rosemary showed us this video when
learning about stroke patients and I was instantly intrigued. I have always
been interested in doing international medical mission work but had not had the
opportunity until now. In addition, this trip was completely PT related which
made it even more appealing. Mallory
Eggert, Maggie Watson and I all signed up to go because it fell perfectly on
our week off between clinical and summer courses. The organization these camps are put on
through is FORU (Friends of the Redeemer United) and was founded by Brooke Riley 10
years ago. There are now two American
physical therapists working in Jamaica: Brooke Riley and Beth Wolffe.
I have
really come to love working with this patient population through clinical
experience and our course work because there is just so much you can do with
them to improve their quality of life and function. To be able to apply everything I have seen
and learned so far to these patients and to see the importance of
individualizing treatment was probably my favorite take away point from this
experience. For this specific Jamaican
population, functional treatment is everything because many of them farm for a
living to support their families. In
addition, we learned so much from the relationships made with fellow students
and PT’s that came from all over the country to do this camp. This was the
first year there were also three Jamaican PT students from the university in
Kingston, Jamaica! So, not only were we
learning a ton from Brooke, Beth and the other therapists, but also, we had the
opportunity to learn all about the amazing food, music, dancing, and Patois
slang that is Jamaican culture first hand.
The stories from this week are
endless but most impressive, were the functional gains made by patients in just
3.5 days of treatment. We learn about
max practice and the benefits when working with stoke populations, but to see
it first hand is an entirely different story. Our schedule was 8-4pm Monday –
Thursday and Friday was a half-day for testing and graduation ceremony. Try and picture yourself working out for 8
hours straight every single day… yeah… not easy. And these wonderful people did it with a
smile on their face because they felt so blessed to have this opportunity to
get better. In just 3.5 days every
single patient made multiple clinically significant improvements in areas of
gait, balance, UE function, and cognition.
This was probably one of the coolest experiences I have ever had the
opportunity to be a part of and I highly recommend students, professors, and
clinicians get involved in opportunities like this no matter what the location
in the world or within the United States.
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