Global Scalpels: A Global Surgery Podcast

Checklists have been instituted in many sectors to help streamline processes. They are there to make things easier and bring peace of mind by eliminating forgotten aspects of a procedures. Surgery is no different. The surgical checklist is vital to the delivery of safe surgery around the world, however, checklist implementation involves changing minds, operating room culture, and the dreaded word...

Medical textbooks are a staple for education for medical trainees worldwide. These textbooks teach through words but they also teach through picture portrayals of conditions students will see in the future. Topics include basic anatomy, skin conditions, injury patterns, and even necessary medical equipment. Unfortunately, many of these textbooks are currently dominated by picture portrayals of pat...

Vaccination efforts around the world have been extremely successful - saving millions. They have been particularly helpful in pediatric populations. While vaccinations for children are important, if they are not followed by adequate access to surgical care, many of these children will still die premature.  Currently part of the bottleneck of decreased access for pediatric populations is the lack o...

“Climate change is the single greatest threat to planetary and human health of our time. It is not a distant future concern, but a process that is occurring here and now.” - Roa L, Velin L, et al. Climate change is a huge idea. It stems from the accumulation of greenhouse gases due to human consumptive practices that results in environmental changes. Some of these changes have drastic changes not...

Performing surgery requires many different parties. Each needs to come to the operating room prepared to excel in their field but also work collaboratively with the other parties. Unfortunately, the field of surgery has the potential to be surgeon-centric and important collaborators like anesthesia fail to be discussed. In this episode, we seek to better highlight the field of anesthesia through t...

Health systems are sick. Around the world gaining access to necessary surgical treatment can be difficult due to inadequate healthcare infrastructures but also due to imbalanced care across demographics. Women across the globe often struggle to gain equal access to healthcare and maternity services - and not just access, but high quality care. The issue extends far past the surgeon in the operatin...

The power of students can be immense. In a team, each person brings something to the table and has different strengths to offer. Students offer the benefit of time, passion, and drive. Mentors offer the benefits of experience, teaching, and context. The combination of student and mentor can bring both to new heights. In the world of global surgery, students have banded together to push the movemen...

Trauma injury kills more people every year than HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis (TB) combined. Despite this, it often takes a backseat when receiving research support, clinical funding, and policy change. Trauma disproportionally affects low- and middle-income countries with its far reaching effects beyond the walls of the hospital. In fact, in some countries like Colombia, severe traumatic injuri...

The term “global surgery” is extremely broad and elusive. “Academic global surgery” even more so. It can be hard to feel like one is making a difference, particularly when there are so many injustices all around us. However, global surgery is everywhere! It is anywhere that there is health inequity. Join us in this inspirational episode as we talk with Dr. Mamta Swaroop about how you can make a di...

Lean methodology is a core principle that focuses on minimizing waste in order to maximize value. In other words, when an organization is lean, they have created the most value possible for both the producer which can then be passed onto the consumer. In order to do this, there needs to be a shift from optimizing individual processes to optimizing entire process streams that transverse multiple pr...

Colonialism has affected almost every major indigenous population around the globe.  Some civilizations have been affected by settler colonialism with large-scale immigration of foreign individuals to overtake land and property that did not belong to them. Other civilizations have experienced more exploitative colonialism where natural resources and native labor have been extracted and even forcib...

Home to 25 million people, North Korea is a world of its own. Insights into the country’s healthcare system are scarce at best, let alone surgical care. This is not the case, however, for Dr Kee Park, a neurosurgeon working with Harvard’s Program in Global Surgery and Social Change and the World Health Organization to support local surgeons in their efforts. Tune in as we discuss innovative, cost-...

In a matter of seconds, your world can change. When a 7.0 magnitude earthquake ripped through Haiti in 2010, no one was prepared for the aftermath that would occur. Over a quarter-million people dead, and with 52 aftershocks, the country continued to be hit over and over. As the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere at the time, the country’s infrastructure was brought to a halt and the proces...

hu·man·i·tar·i·an: (h)yo͞oˌmanəˈterēən/ = concerned with or seeking to promote human welfare. We often put humanitarian aid as an ideal – but what does it truly mean to be a humanitarian? Is it volunteering one’s time or financial resources to another? Is it only during times of crisis or disaster, or is it at any time? What are the ethics behind the aid and how can the fundamental human right of...

There are many ways to make a difference in people’s lives. Some people do that through medicine. Others through technology. And even others through public health. For our speaker this week, he started as a clinician and has transitioned to a public health specialist. Global surgery requires an army - people from every discipline to come together to create change. One cannot be the master of all t...

Delivering care in rural areas is one of the hardest challenges of global surgery. Access to necessary medications is difficult and limited, but access to surgery is even harder, forcing many to travel hours on muddy roads through public transport to seek care. Even still, these are the lucky ones. Many never even make it out. Today about 15% of people live in rural areas around the world. In Mada...

Laparoscopy is a major breakthrough in surgery. By using gas to inflate the abdomen, surgeons are able to drastically increase their visibility and thus can work through very small incisions to do major abdominal surgeries. The benefits are numerous including smaller scars, quicker recovery, and shorter time to return to work (which decreases lost wages). The problem? It requires a constant supply...

Imagine you are sitting in a medical tent in a combat zone. You are the military surgeon and a solder is brought to you with injuries from a bomb blast that you have no idea how to treat. This wasn’t in your training. You have no idea what to do. How do you save this soldier’s limb - or even more importantly - this soldier’s life? Now imagine you are in a rural, remote hospital. A new patient is b...

You are sitting at your desk with a paper and pencil. You draw a rectangle on the paper and start looking at it from different angles. It represents the layout of an operating room. You draw a larger box around the inner one. This represents the whole perioperative area. What do you put inside these boxes? How many water stations do you need? Hand washing basins? What about oxygen pipes or electri...

As a country, creating a national long-term strategy to address barriers in your health system is a daunting task. Where do you start? What do you do if you fail? And how to you ensure long-term longevity. It is your responsibility to bring together key stake holders with different backgrounds including: health economics, surgery, business, advocacy, health policy, and so much more! This is where...

In many regions of the world, clean water, electricity, medical facilities, and medical personnel are limited or nonexistent. Healthcare infrastructure is lacking and access to needed supplies can be highly variable. But what if you could have a state-of-the-art hospital and a whole crew of medical professionals delivered directly to the areas that most need it? This is where Mercy Ships comes in....

250 degrees Fahrenheit. 121 degrees Celsius. This is the temperature at which surgical equipment is sterilized. Pressured steam envelops each and every instrument cleansing them of impurities and killing microbes. This whole process is vital to the practice of safe surgery and is done in the confines of an autoclave. In order to create these temperatures and the resulting steam, the autoclave mach...

Every day 830 women die from pregnancy or childbirth related causes - that is over 330,000 per year. That is 830 mothers. 830 sisters. 830 wives. Lives lost, and families shattered. Sometimes these deaths come as a result of surgical complications, other times due to unsanitary conditions or infection, and still more due to severe bleeding that could easily be prevented if they had adequate access...

Hundreds of millions of shipping containers are transported around the world annually. Some of them are filled with cars, toys, or cosmetics. Others are filled with perishable food items or electronics. As the world shut down in the wake of COVID-19, we all saw what happens when supply chains are disrupted. Supermarket shelves full of toilet paper and canned goods disappeared seemingly overnight....

Diversity is the key to innovation and new solutions. Global surgery is a field that needs people from any and all backgrounds to tackle this issue. So how did a PhD researcher in immunology at Yale become a major force for good in global surgery? What does role does value-based healthcare have when working in low-resource settings where healthcare isn’t even present let alone “value-based” and ho...