HME representatives traveled throughout Haiti the week of April 9, touring clinics and teaching hospitals and meeting with our Haitian partners. Alongside colleagues from Dartmouth College, HME director Dr. Galit Sacajiu and Haiti-based Coordinator Drake Delvoix visited hospitals in Mirebalais, Cange and Hinche, and met with the Deans of Haiti’s medical schools to discuss next steps in curriculum development and implementation. More updates soon to come.

Dr. Poitivien of Quisqueya University leads the students in the Hippocratic Oath

A doctor’s white coat is the symbol of the medical profession: the trust, the training, and the responsibility to humanity. On Sunday, January 15, 2012, a small group of Haitian medical students at Quisqueya University in Petion-Ville participated in a Humanism and Medicine Ceremony (also known as the White Coat Ceremony), the first ever of its kind held in Haiti. The students took the Hippocratic Oath and received their first white coats. The HME Project was honored to work with the Gold Foundation for Humanism in Medicine to make the ceremony happen. HME’s Clinical Director Dr. Steve Lenger was there, and has this remembrance:

I was delighted to travel to Haiti last week with HME’s Medical Education Director, Dr. Galit Sacajiu, to attend the first-ever White Coat Ceremony in that country. Over 200 people crowded into an auditorium to witness the ceremony, as about 30 medical students took the oath and put on their new white coats.

The evening was hosted by Dr. Genevieve Poitevien, Dean of Quisqueya University’s Faculty of Health Sciences, and speakers included Quisqueya faculty members Jacky Lumarque and student representative Dr. Lorthe Blema and our own Dr. Sacajiu, along with former Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis. We were honored to have as keynote speaker Dr. William Pape, founder and director of GHESKIO in Port-au-Prince and Professor of Medicine at Cornell University in New York. Dr. Pape and his team have been credited with slowing the spread of AIDS/HIV in Haiti and improving public health immeasurably. You can read his remarks in French here. (English translation here.) The entire event was accompanied by music from a Port-au-Prince-based orchestra, and we all celebrated at a reception afterward.

The orchestra added some pomp & circumstance to the occasion.

I couldn’t help thinking of my own White Coat Ceremony as a medical student, and remembering the excitement and pride I felt in becoming a member of the medical profession. It was apparent that the ceremony was deeply meaningful to all who participated. We are grateful to the Gold Foundation for their support, and to all of our partners who helped to bring about this event.

View a photo gallery of the event.

Additional news coverage:
CNN
Bergen County (NJ) Record
New Jersey Jewish Standard
Le Nouvelliste (Haiti) (English translation here)

The Bergen Record (NJ, USA) featured the HME Project in an article about the White Coat Ceremony in Haiti. Click here to read the article. Look for a new post from us about the Ceremony later this week!

HME Project Director Dr. Galit Sacajiu was featured on CNN on Sunday, January 15, speaking about our work. Click on the image below to see the video!

The HME Project is proud to announce the expansion of our collaboration with Haiti’s state medical school, the Faculté de Médecine et de Pharmacie de l’Université d’Etat d’Haïti/UEH, into a full pediatric curriculum. On Wednesday, December 7, HME presented a test videoconference lecture entitled “Acute Renal Failure: Diagnosis and Treatment”, given by Dr. Brian Remillard of Dartmouth College to a packed house of pediatric residents. The pediatric curriculum will be supervised by Dr. Jessy Colimon, Director of Pediatric Residency, and Dr. Dodley Sévère, Vice-Dean of the medical school, with the continued assistance of Dr. Lucien Albert from the Université de Montréal.

On December 5, several HME staff members had the opportunity to participate in “Edikasyon pou tout moun” (“Education For All”) in Port-au-Prince, a day-long conference on the state of medical education and professional development for physicians in Haiti. The conference was organized by the Boston-based organization Physicians for Haiti (P4H), and featured talks on “The Right to Medical Education” and “The Challenges of Health Professionals in Haiti,” among other topics.

HME’s Haiti Operations Director, Drake Delvoix, sat on the “Current State of Course Development” panel and presented a talk introducing HME and our work to the audience. Mr. Delvoix outlined our approach to curriculum development, using our weekly Wednesday lecture series as a model of successful curriculum development.The entire conference was available to off-site audience members via live videostreaming, made possible by Vidyo’s generous donation of equipment and technical support to HME, who in turn donated these services to the conference organizers.

HME Project Board Member and Curriculum Consultant Dr. Cruff Renard recently addressed a class of fourth year medical students at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, NY. The students are taking part in a one-month elective course in Research-Based Health Activism.  Dr. Renard, a native of Haiti, described the work of the HME Project within the context of health activism, explaining the process of

1. Identifying the problem
2. Setting goals and objectives
3. Creating collegial relationships and
4. Producing an outcome.

He discussed why he and his colleagues felt a strong need to address the issue of higher medical education in Haiti, how the project’s goals were set, and the strategy plan, including possible coalitions, resources and tactics. The students were given a first-hand account of how their skills as physicians can be used in activism and advocacy work.

More information is available on the course in this journal article and this article from the New York Times.

Our schedule of remote lectures (powered by Vidyo) is rapidly filling up through the end of the year. Wednesday mornings are becoming a regular event for faculty and residents, and we’re always looking for ways to improve the experience. Here are some of the topics and presenters on the schedule for this fall:

Nov. 9: Anemia: approaches to diagnosis and therapy — Dr. Cruff Renard, Albert Einstein College of Medicine/HME Project

Nov. 16: Typhoid fever or influenza — Dr. Makeda Semret, McGill University

Nov. 23: HIV PEP/PreP — Dr. Jodie Dionne-Odom, Dartmouth Medical School

Nov. 30: Management of a newborn with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy — Dr. Pia Wintermark, McGill University

Dec. 7: Clinical approach to the adolescent patient — Dr. Alan Pavlanis, McGill University

A complete calendar with more information (including details for presenters and participants) can be found here.

On August 19, the Partnership for Haitian Medical Education (including representatives of the Haiti Medical Education Project, Partners in Health, Dartmouth Medical School, McGill Global Health Programs, and the University of Montréal) met in Montréal to discuss current and future plans for improving medical education in Haiti. Dr. Claude Surena, president of the Haiti Medical Association (AMH) was also able to join via video conference. The group reviewed projects currently underway and generated several exciting ideas for how to proceed – many big things soon to come!