Service Learning: Building the Foundation for Global Service

Welcome back! For the past several weeks, Drs. Tina Butler and Jennifer Eames have been sharing their experiences with service learning in PA education. We've talked about connecting service to your mission, creating measurable goals, and building a culture in which students, faculty, staff, families, and community partners all have opportunities to participate.

But what happens when you want to take service farther from home? International service can be tremendously rewarding for students, faculty, and the communities they visit, but it requires some precise planning and practice. Before anyone books flights or packs supplies, programs need to think carefully about what kind of experience they're creating, who they're partnering with, and how they're going to prepare students to serve responsibly.

I'm handing you back to Drs. Butler and Eames.

First, Know What You're Creating

Before you begin planning an international experience, be clear about exactly what you're offering. An international service trip and an international supervised clinical practice experience aren't necessarily the same thing.

Under ARC-PA requirements, required core clinical experiences must take place in the United States. An international SCPE may be offered as an elective, but it cannot substitute for a required core rotation. Programs also need to consider the policies and responsibilities that apply when students travel internationally, even when the trip is a voluntary service experience rather than a course or clinical rotation.

Begin by understanding what you're proposing, what requirements apply, and what responsibilities your program is assuming for the students who participate.

Build the Local Connection First

Once you know what kind of experience you're creating, ask an even more fundamental question: Who will help you understand the community you're entering?

It's easy to approach international service with wonderful intentions. You want to help. You see a need. You have medical knowledge and enthusiastic students who are ready to contribute.

But good intentions aren't enough.

Before you decide what your team will do, build a relationship with a reputable organization that already knows the community. Look for organizations doing sustainable work and partners who understand the local culture, health care system, and actual needs of the people you'll be serving.

That local connection can help establish the parameters of your entire experience. Things like: What services are actually needed? What should your team bring? What supplies can be obtained locally? What can legally enter the country? What forms or documentation will you need to get donated materials through customs?

Don't answer those questions from thousands of miles away based on what you assume a community needs. Your goal should be to value-add, not value-subtract.

Research potential partners carefully. Find out how long they've been working in the community, how they work with local providers, and how resources are distributed. If something doesn't feel right, it's okay to say no. Not every opportunity is the right opportunity for your program.

Give Yourself Time

Once you've found the right partnership, give yourself enough time to prepare. We recommend beginning at least a year in advance.

Students may require immunizations, and some immunization schedules take considerable time. Your program needs appropriate travel health and safety policies. You need to consider current guidance and conditions in the country you're visiting. Travelers should know how they'll receive alerts and important information while they're away.

Depending on the location and the experience, and other factors such as language barriers, it may also be worthwhile for faculty to make an exploratory trip before bringing students. See where you'll be working. Meet your partners. Understand the environment. Identify potential problems while you still have time to solve them.

Delegate the Responsibility

Don't put the entire experience on one faculty member who is simultaneously trying to manage travel, supplies, fundraising, communication, schedules, and a group of students.

Divide and conquer. Let the students take an active role in preparations. One student might take responsibility for researching a particular issue. Another might help coordinate a portion of the fundraising. Others can assist with supplies, education, logistics, or other aspects of preparation.

The experience begins long before the plane takes off. Giving students ownership of the preparation helps them understand that international service isn't simply a trip someone else has arranged for them. They're part of the team responsible for making it work.

Building a Great Team

Your team need not consist only of PA students and faculty. Depending on the project and the needs identified by your community partner, think about who else might have something valuable to contribute.

International service may benefit from the skills of pharmacists, physical therapists, dentists, optometrists, psychologists, social workers, or professionals from other disciplines. Alumni may want to participate. Staff may have valuable skills. Family members can sometimes contribute, too.

Occasionally the most valuable person on your team turns out to be someone you never would have predicted. On one of our trips, a nurse brought her husband along. He was a plumber. The facility where we were serving had a children’s therapy pool that hadn't worked properly in years. He looked at it, figured out what was wrong, and fixed it. Guess who became the MVP of the trip?

Go In as a Learner

Once program leadership has done that work, you can prepare your students for their role in the experience.

We tell our students: Go in as a learner. Don't fly into a community for a week assuming you're going to fix its problems. Listen to the people who live and work there. Learn from local providers. Respect their knowledge and their customs.

Your community partner can help students understand what they're walking into before they arrive, but students still need to enter with enough humility to recognize that they don't have all the answers simply because they have medical training.

International service means joining a partnership. Everyone involved has something to teach and something to learn.

Coming soon…

In the next blog, Drs. Butler and Eames will tackle the practical side of international service learning: funding the trip, finding supplies, getting those supplies where they need to go, navigating customs, structuring your time, and preparing for all the things that won't go according to plan. Don’t miss it!