In The Medical Mission Business.
$300. According to one Nicaraguan doctor, that’s the salary they can expect to earn each month.
$1400. That’s approximately the program fee I paid for one week in beautiful Nicaragua. The organization I worked with this past week caters specifically to undergrads, and a typical mission can fill up with anywhere from 15 to 35 students. At $1400 a piece, that’s a significant chunk of change going from American undergraduate loans to the medical tourism teams of Nicaragua.
No doubt a lot of that money goes to hotels, transportation, and interpreters, but not that much.
While I’m not certain what a doctor’s salary is within this particular organization, it’s easy to see that it would far exceed $75 a week. Thus, there’s a strong financial incentive for these doctors to spend their time in the role of a glorified tour guide, instead of providing continual care in a hospital or clinic. The doctors are driven to the countryside, seeing patients in an entirely inefficient manner with no possibility of follow-up. The fact that we had doctors with some impressive credentials speaks even more of our buying power. It’s crazy the economic impact a bunch of clueless undergraduates can have on a country with such a small cost of living.
I don’t doubt that we helped some people last week, and gave access to medical care where it wasn’t readily available. But we were quite inefficient and even ineffective in many instances, and the process would be much worse with undergraduate students. The real problem is that the focus of this trip was not the suffering patient. It was the American medical tourist.
We were babied at every step. We stayed in comfortable hotels. Dinner plans were provided for us each evening. There was a meeting held to make sure we were satisfied with the experience. There was even a team of dancers brought into the hotel to give us a taste of culture. Field trips were discouraged, including eating out, depending on the location. This was personally frustrating and at odds with my past international experience. Our safety was the stated priority, but I can’t help but wonder if the real issue was protecting the safety of the organization. Even just having that much emphasis on my well-being was in itself annoying. Forget about the students. Let’s focus on the people.
From start to finish the trip ran like a business, and we, the dumb students, were the rich clients. Not that I’m opposed to these trips, but they ought to be re-branded to more accurately represent their nature. Medical Tourism.
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