This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Medical Practice, Other  • Public Health  • Pulmonary Diseases, Other  • Surgical Interventions, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic

Why Bother to "Mission"?

Fizan Abdullah, MD, PhD

Arch Surg. 2008;143(8):728-729.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Deep in the Ashanti region of Ghana, "well" is a relative term. Everything was going well for us until that 14th operation in 24 hours. Before that 14th case, our team from The Johns Hopkins Hospital, which had been working for the last day at the remote Asakore Mission Hospital, had already had a headlight failure that required us to use a camping light during surgery, inguinal hernias so large that we had no other option than to place mesh in unsterile conditions, and a cautery malfunction that delivered an unforgettable mild shock after passage of an observable spark to my body. (The adjective "mild" was used by the rest of the team and remains in dispute!) Despite these various setbacks, things really were going well until one of our team members, whom we had posted in the recovery area, pulled me out of the operating . . . [Full Text of this Article]

AUTHOR INFORMATION