Interplast provides advanced training to increase the skill levels of its international medical partners.

Interplast provides direct, hands-on training for developing world medical personnel.

"Each year, Interplast teaches 600 overseas medical professionals to perform surgeries more safely, effectively and efficiently on their own. One surgeon in a developing country can potentially perform thousands of life-changing surgeries in his/her lifetime.”
— Dr. Scott Corlew, Interplast's Chief Medical Officer
 

Visiting Educators: Interplast's Visiting Educator Program sends volunteer medical professionals to developing countries to provide direct, hands-on training for local medical personnel who work with the poor.

Multiple factors—difficult admissions, high financial cost and language barriers—make it difficult for medical professionals from abroad to come to the United States for advanced surgical training. The Visiting Educator Program delivers education and training where it is needed, and builds capacity and the supply of trained doctors who are dedicated to offering aid in their own underserved communities.

Interplast collaborates with its international partners to define local community needs and to set local goals and objectives.  The reconstructive plastic surgery topics include hand surgery, microsurgery, advanced cleft techniques and burn reconstruction. Training is also given in anesthesia, nursing, orthodontics and physical and hand therapy. Click here for the current schedule of workshops.

Each week-long workshop provides training through hands-on surgical care, lectures, educational materials and question-and-answer sessions. Interplast relies on the concept of teaching surgeries through observation, but most especially through hands-on training during actual operations. This method assures our international medical partners’ success in learning and performing new skills.

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Technology connects surgeons in remote regions of the developing world with each other and with physicians in the United States, Canada and around the world.

Technology: Training does not stop when the visiting educators return home. Innovative web-based technology allows for medical training to continue long after the workshop ends, and permits the quality and safety review of future cases by Interplast’s chief medical officer.

Interplast Grand Rounds: Interplast Grand Rounds (IGR) is a state-of-the-art web-based program that connects isolated, developing world surgeons with a global network of medical professionals for advice on difficult cases and to collaborate in the delivery of high-quality care to patients living in poverty overseas.

Physicians post digital photographs and case summaries of complicated cases requiring reconstructive surgery, and almost immediately, experts from around the world log on and offer advice and insight into available surgical techniques and follow-up care. Surgeons from 17 developing world countries in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America regularly collaborate with surgeons in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. Without the benefits of this valuable global medical advice, poor patients with complicated cases might never receive the expert care they need.

Interplast Grand Rounds is helping to educate and build the capacity of developing world surgeons who provide free care for the poor in their own communities. Many developing world countries have fewer than 10 plastic reconstructive surgeons. Political unrest also plagues many of these countries and isolates the doctors further—making the advice of online colleagues even more important. Physicians from countries like Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Sudan—countries currently in varying states of turmoil and on the U.S. State Department’s travel warning list—are able to virtually connect with their colleagues around the world and gain valuable online advice and peer mentoring. 

Because of the value Interplast Grand Rounds has added to the experience of Interplast’s partner surgeons, the organization is about to unveil a similar collaboration tool for the developing world anesthesiologists who work with Interplast. You can take a virtual tour of the site at:  www.interplastgrandrounds.org.

Technology for Quality Review: Using digital photographs and web-based data entry forms, cases performed abroad by Interplast Surgical Outreach Centers are systematically reviewed by Interplast’s chief medical officer and expert surgeons in the United States, Canada and around the world in order to ensure medical safety and quality. Interplast’s Burn and Cleft Outreach Databases provides an online quality improvement process and data recording system to assure the highest standards of care for those seeking care in its 12 Surgical Outreach Centers. 

Interplast uses personal data assistants (PDAs) to record patient chart information on medical volunteer team trips.   With this system, Interplast collects patient medical information to secure statistical data and assist in studies of medical information relevant to Interplast and other organizations.

Technology Training: In recent years, medical education and care has evolved in even the poorest nations of the world. But, in many cases, surgeons are trained in the basic aspects of surgery with little opportunity to advance their skills to perform reconstructive plastic surgery. 

Interplast purchases, produces and distributes CD-ROM educational tools to provide our international medical partners with advanced medical training.  The Interplast Online Teaching Library makes available to all partner medical personnel worldwide and medical volunteers the latest applicable abstracts and medical presentations Interplast has.  With specialized material in anesthesia, surgery, pediatrics and nursing, the site is designed to provide critical information for the entire team of health providers with whom Interplast works.  Interplast also partners with Global-HELP, making even more medical publications and textbooks available to our international partners. 

Interplast’s high-tech training efforts help surgeons and other medical professionals who crave the ability to care for all the people of their countries in the sophisticated manner they know is possible.

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Medical Scholars Program: Through its Medical Scholars Program, Interplast provides training for promising health care providers from developing countries in order to improve medical access and healthcare worldwide. The international humanitarian organization selects candidates who have: worked with its medical teams; demonstrated the motivation and capability to provide care for the underserved in their own countries; and have the ability and desire to train other medical professionals.

The program creates incredible opportunities for skilled and dedicated health care providers from developing countries to study in the United States and other countries, so that they can bring these skills back to poor patients in their own communities. Medical professionals learn from experts in the fields of surgery, medicine, nursing or physical/speech therapy. And it all translates into increased medical access for children in developing countries.

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Webster Fellowship: Interplast’s Jerome P. Webster Fellowship allows one newly trained, board-eligible plastic surgeon to work at Interplast sites around the world for one year.  The fellowship is not only the experience of a lifetime for the Webster Fellow him/herself, but it is an important component of our medical programs.  The fellow conducts vital evaluations of our programs, creates educational curricula and participates in Interplast surgical trips as a surgeon, lecturer and team leader.  This immersion program puts the fellow in the field for almost a complete year; consequently, the fellow becomes Interplast’s “eyes and ears,” reporting on trends and situations that help Interplast improve its medical services. 

Candidate Qualifications:

• Must be recently trained in plastic and reconstructive surgery and be judged proficient by his/her mentors in a wide range of reconstructive surgical techniques.
  
• Must be either eligible or certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. Must hold either a U.S. or Canadian citizenship or possess the appropriate U.S. visa.
  
• Must be free to travel (sometimes unaccompanied) for up to ten months per year.

Webster Fellow's Range of Duties: Variability of the fellow's experience is expected, depending on the needs of Interplast and the capabilities of the fellow. Duties may include, but are not limited to the following activities:

• Participate as an operating surgeon in six to ten Interplast trips per year. This involves overseas travel for up to 30 weeks a year.
  
• Participate in overseas site visits.
  
• Work with chief medical officer to formulate teaching programs and materials for Interplast sites.
  
• Identify and produce research projects where appropriate.
  
• Author and submit a research manuscript to a peer-reviewed plastic surgery journal.
  
• Conduct pre- and post-trip clinics at surgical sites.
  
• Work closely with host surgeons throughout the world, especially with respect to continuing medical education.
  
• Attend key Interplast meetings when possible, e.g., board of directors, medical services committee and other specialty committees.
  
• Work in physician recruitment.
  
• Maintain a journal and produce a written report at the end of the year with recommendations about the fellowship.
  
• Gain experience in medical equipment management by assisting in preparation and shipment of medical supplies and equipment for a trip.
  
• Participate in fundraising activities as needed.

Contact Information: For application requirements and instructions, please email: Fran Cunniffe, medical education and outreach coordinator, at fran@interplast.org.

Deadline for receipt of application materials is September 1.

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