My ministry is focused on surgical education and discipleship, which allows me to simultaneously provide compassionate, quality, Christ-centered surgical care to the least of these while equipping young national surgeons to grow as surgeons and learn to incorporate their faith into their clinical practice.
My primary focus has been on training and discipling my surgical residents; however, over the past year, I've also had the privilege of mentoring two junior surgical staff. It's been a joy to help them grow as surgical trainers.
I've been partnering in this endeavor with the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons since 2013.
Late in 2020, I received a request to consider helping to start a surgical residency education at a hospital in this region. They have been praying about hosting a PAACS program at their hospital for many years now, and I've been able to be a liaison between the hospital and PAACS. I know that the launch of an official program is premature, but it's a real possibility even just a couple of years from now.
I'll be helping to launch surgical residency education in September 2021. This is such a unique and strategic location, engaging multiple unreached people groups with holistic medical care.
We look forward to joining in the ongoing efforts to meet the physical and spiritual needs of these people groups. There is a more severe burden for surgical care as well due to the fact that patients have limited options and can't easily access the services that are available to those located near the city. The hospital is actively working on recruitment and our plan will be for two or three residents, to begin with, and we will assess the feasibility of pursuing a PAACS program over the first several years as we get an idea of what caseload can be expected with a full-time US surgeon present on campus.
Spiritual outreach is done primarily through performing holistic healthcare.
Part of training and discipling my residents includes working with them in patient care and inquiring about patients' spiritual needs as well as their physical, social, emotional, and psychological needs. That means teaching them about taking a brief spiritual history as part of a routine history and physical, praying with patients in the clinic, on the wards, and in the OR, and learning how to share stories from the gospels to encourage and educate our patients. It also involves a chance at Bible study with some non-Christian employees; however, that has mostly been put on hold due to pandemic restrictions. There are also opportunities to lead our local church, lead Bible studies for other groups including engineering students at the local engineering college, and visiting medical students.