Short-Term Surgical Missions: Role of Pharmacist Volunteers.

Health care professionals often participate in short-term surgical missions in underserved areas of the world. Surgical missions often rely on the use of medications to provide health care to these underserved areas in patients with multiple comorbid conditions. The direct role a pharmacist may have in surgical missions is not well described in the literature; however, numerous opportunities exist for pharmacist involvement to improve patient care and operational processes throughout medication planning and delivery of surgical missions.

Postoperative Pain Management Among Dominican and American Health-Care Providers: A Qualitative Analysis.

Background: U.S. practitioners have prescribed opioid analgesics increasingly in recent years, contributing to what has been declared an opioid epidemic by the U.

Sustainability assessment of a short-term international medical mission.

Background: Few studies have analyzed the tangible impact of global, philanthropic medical missions. We used qualitative methods to analyze the work of one such mission, Operation Walk Boston, which has made yearly trips to a Dominican Republic hospital since 2008.

Methods: We interviewed twenty-one American and Dominican participants of the Operation Walk Boston team to investigate how the program led to changes at the host Dominican hospital and how the experience caused both mission protocols and U.

Patient disease perceptions and coping strategies for arthritis in a developing nation: a qualitative study.

Background: There is little prior research on the burden of arthritis in the developing world. We sought to document how patients with advanced arthritis living in the Dominican Republic are affected by and cope with their disease.

Methods: We conducted semi-structured, one-to-one interviews with economically disadvantaged Dominican patients with advanced knee and/or hip arthritis in the Dominican Republic.

Pre-operative status and quality of life following total joint replacement in a developing country: a prospective pilot study.

Background: An increasing number of medical relief organizations have launched programs to perform total joint replacements in the developing world. There is a paucity of data on the clinical outcomes of these procedures. We documented pre- and post-operative pain and functional status in a group of low income Dominicans who underwent total hip or knee replacement performed by an American relief organization.