Each year at Spring Break, hundreds of Baylor University students, including many from the College of Arts & Sciences, spend their week off from classes traveling around the world on Baylor-sponsored mission trips. During Spring Break 2016, members of the Baylor pre-med honor society Alpha Epsilon Delta (AED) traveled to the Dominican Republic to partner with the nonprofit group Orphan’s Heart. The students helped provide basic healthcare to residents, assisted with community projects and supported children sponsored by Orphan’s Heart.

One of the people giving up their Spring Break to travel to the Dominican Republic was Arts & Sciences student Jennifer Teague, a junior biology major from Flower Mound, Texas (shown at left in the small photo, and in the far right of the back row in the photo below). She is a pre-med student who plans to graduate from Baylor in May 2017. In the first part of her account of the trip, Jennifer shares memories and images of the time she spent visiting and working in local healthcare facilities.

My Mission Trip to the Dominican Republic (Part One)
By Jennifer Teague

During my time at Baylor, I have been on several international mission trips. In my freshman year, I traveled to Kenya with Straw to Bread and went to Guatemala with Baylor’s chapter of the American Medical Student Association (AMSA). During my sophomore year I went to Nicaragua with the Baylor Medical Service Organization (MSO), and this year I went to the Dominican Republic with AED over Spring Break. No matter how many short-term mission trips I participate in, putting the experience into words afterward is always a challenge. Like any anecdotal retelling, the stories seem to wane and lose meaning over time, and the trip fades as life moves on. I will not be able to do the mission trip justice in just two short blog posts, but I will do my best to offer a retelling of the highlights and what I learned from the Dominican Republic.

Our Baylor team consisted of 11 undergraduate students, one graduate student, one optometrist and one professor — Dr. Dan Samples, a lecturer in biology. Geordyn Hoge (the vice president of our AED organization) and I started organizing the trip in the fall 2015 semester. With the help of BUMissions we discovered Orphan’s Heart, a mission-oriented organization that helps lead short-term mission teams year-round.

At first, we were told that we would be working on their long-term project of building houses and ministering to the community, but as we talked more about our hope to have a medical missions component to the trip, Orphan’s Heart worked with us to design an itinerary that also included experiencing different levels of healthcare throughout the week. Our team split into groups of three or four members, each with a translator, and during the week we rotated through several locations. including the local hospital in Peralta, the city hospital in Azua, the local clinic and the community transformation center, where we worked on houses and gave health education lessons to the children.

At the different levels of healthcare, one thing that stood out at every location was the resourcefulness and dedication of the physicians. At each location we met new people — all taking time out of their day to show us around. I was amazed that they had agreed to allow us into their work space and observe for a week. Instead of standing quietly in the corner, which is typical of students allowed to shadow healthcare professionals in the United States, we were welcomed into the environment and allowed to participate. For example, some of us were able to watch surgeries, some helped clean the feet of diabetic patients, and some did rounds with the Emergency Room doctor. In each of these experiences, the physicians included our group in the process by explaining patient situations and having us ask questions. Despite the fact that they had their own duties and responsibilities, they opened their doors to our team.

In Peralta, the hospital director introduced us to the local public hospital. He said that their public hospital is one of the nicer ones, but many people travel to Santo Domingo to work because public hospital physicians make a tenth of the salary of private practice physicians. In fact, throughout Azua, a strike was in progress the week we were there in protest of low pay and poor government funding in hospitals. Public Hospitals are 100 percent free, and the saying is true that you get what you pay for. There may be one CT (CAT scan) machine in all of Azua, and if that breaks then there is no CT for the city. Repair may take several years.

Another issue in Azua is that sometimes, even with brand-new equipment, the hospital cannot utilize it because there are few if any technicians in the area who can operate the machine and interpret the results. In the Dominican Republic, students have the option of going into medical school right after secondary school instead of going to university first. On the one hand, it is not as difficult to become a doctor there as it is in the United States. On the other hand, this means that many people pursue the profession with the goal of working in Santo Domingo and making a lot of money. Few have the passion to work in public hospitals because of the low pay.

The physician who showed us around the Azua city hospital was coming off a 36-hour shift and was not paid for her time when she was giving us a tour. While leading us through the hospital, she stopped to talk to patients in the hallway, check up on those admitted, and refer anyone who was not receiving care to another resident who was on the clock. Despite the lack of sleep and the strike, she made sure to take care of everyone in the hospital to the best of her ability. She did not leave until she had walked every floor and visited with every patient waiting in the hallway. Watching her, I gained renewed hope that it is possible to become a physician and remain passionate about patients.

In Part Two of my account of our trip to the Dominican Republic, I will talk about how Baylor students worked with local children and joined in on Orphan’s Heart’s long-range project to provide new housing in a rural area.

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KEY TO PHOTOS:

TOP: Group photo with: (Top row, L to R) Baylor students Sam Winsten, Aaron Hocher and Brandon Kent, Dr. Dan Samples, students AnnaRose Hamilton, Melanie Weyers, Arnold Garza and Jennifer Teague; (Bottom row, L to R) students Hayley Sharma, Lucila Beuses and David Rendon
SECOND DOWN: (L to R) Baylor students Hayle Sharma, Brandon Kent and Jennifer Teague outside the emergency room in Peralta
THIRD DOWN: Baylor students Eva Rodrigueza and Aaron Hocher
FOURTH DOWN: (L to R) Medical staffers Dr. Karen, Alex and Dr. Shahin in the local clinic
BOTTOM (L to R) Baylor students Aaron Hocher, Dani Shahin and Lucila Beuses