Global Health Education Student Experiences Bree Cattelino

I was one of five Drexel students to participate in the Himalayan Health Exchange’s February Outer Himalayas trip. I had never before traveled to India, or anywhere in South Asia, so this opportunity initially appealed because it touched on general aspects of global health and wilderness medicine. Over the course of 28 days, including 17 clinical days, I applied my history-taking skills to hundreds of patient interactions, honing focused physical exam skills (especially musculoskeletal), choosing which lab and imaging techniques available in resource-limited settings (think, glucose tests, urine strips, and butterfly ultrasound, as well as reading printed images) would further the differential and inform my advised next steps.

For the first 10 days of the rotation, our group was based out of the town of Bir in Himachal Pradesh. Each day before breakfast, I would wake up early to drink chai in the outdoor gazebo on the hotel grounds and watch the sun flood the mountainside. After breakfast, we would walk paths of various lengths to the daily designated community square or school, chatting with fellow medical students from around the world. We would communicate through a translator to conduct well and sick visits for the full age spectrum. Evening lectures and discussions during patient visits provided didactic learning about illnesses more specific to rural geography and helped contextualize the strengths and weaknesses of the Indian health system. The latter half of the trip followed a similar pattern of clinics, though we stayed in different camps and hotels and traveled further distances by car to reach more communities in the outer Himalayas.

Outside of the clinic, our group was also fantastically close-knit for people who’d known each other for just a brief time. We celebrated birthdays and weddings, made our own “Palentine’s Day” event (a spin off “Galentine’s Day”) with secret "palentines" and spent most nights playing group games. These simple paragraphs could never do full justice to the amazing experiences available through this time abroad. The setting was absolutely gorgeous, the formative medical opportunities ideal for someone seeking to solidify their knowledge of the basics of medical care, and the overall social and learning environment deeply supportive. I am truly grateful for the chance to work with HHE as a medical student and hope to return as a resident.

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