International Service Learning: Experiential Medical Education
This podcast will highlight the values of international service learning study abroad trips taken by healthcare focused faculty and students. Guests will include healthcare focused students and faculty, from high school to university, that have had an opportunity to participate in an international service-learning trip, as well as healthcare professionals that have served abroad. Additionally, we will have guests that are industry leaders in healthcare, education, study abroad, spirituality, and service as well as those living in the countries being served. Through our "passionate conversations about healthcare experiences", both internationally and locally, we hope to motivate and inspire others to consider participating in an international service-learning trip ... which might lead to a future career in healthcare.
Episodes
26 episodes
Stepping Outside My Comfort Zone Changed How I See Medicine
A patient waits weeks with a worsening cough, trying herbal tea because a clinic is hard to reach and a hospital visit can cost an entire day of work. That single reality drives so much of what we explore with Leah, a University of South Caroli...
Public Health & Service Learning: A Pathway to Internal Medicine
A four-hour drive should not be the difference between a routine fix and a life-altering outcome, but in many places it is. We sit down with Austin, a graduating medical student about to start internal medicine residency, to talk through the mo...
Safe Care, Far From Home
Want to help without harming? We sit down with Dr. Patrick Hickey—nurse, educator, author, and veteran leader in international service learning—to map the real work behind ethical global health volunteering. From the first country risk check to...
A Fourth Year Medical Student’s Global Health Experience In Belize
You can feel the moment a clinician realizes the test they want simply doesn’t exist. That’s where our conversation with Rafik goes, and it’s why his reflections on Belize stay with us long after the trip ends.We sit down with Rafik, a ...
A Gap Year Service Learning Trip To Belize Confirms a Future as an MD
A blood pressure of 200 over 100. A patient who listens, then calmly says he’s fine and leaves. Moments like that force you to wrestle with the part of medicine no textbook can solve: culture, faith, autonomy, and what it really means to help. ...
A Future Doctor Finds Her Path By Serving Patients In Resource-Limited Clinics
Belize looks like paradise until you step into a clinic where “limited resources” isn’t a concept, it’s the daily operating reality. Dr. Patrick Hickey sits down with Lauren, a recent University of South Carolina grad on the pre-med track, to u...
A Fourth-Year Med Student Plans A Gap Year Medical Trip To Belize
You can learn the steps of medicine from a book, but you learn the weight of medicine when you sit across from a patient and have to earn trust fast. We’re joined by Gabby G, a fourth-year medical student at the University of South Carolina who...
A Pre-Dental Student Explains What Global Dental Care Really Looks Like
The fastest way to understand dentistry isn’t another lecture, it’s sitting chairside in a real clinic where the tools are limited, the need is high, and you have to earn trust before you can help. We’re joined by Nikki, a University of South C...
A Trip To Kenya Reframed What Nursing Means
You can prepare for the clinical work, pack the supplies, and review the protocols and still feel completely unprepared for what poverty looks like up close. That’s what makes Camila’s story stick. She’s an ICU bedside nurse and case manager in...
How A Medical Sales Representative Found Purpose On A Humanitarian Mission Trip
A stranger’s LinkedIn message turned into a story we can’t stop thinking about. Anna, a 23-year-old medical sales representatives, packed her bags for Honduras and traded the OR sidelines for a week of hard, heart-forward work—turning a church ...
How Universities Can Build Ethical, High-Impact International Programs
Curiosity is a muscle, and global learning is the workout. We sit down with Emory University’s Associate Director of Global Engagement, Natalie Cruz, to explore how students, faculty, and institutions can move beyond stamp-collecting travel tow...
Service and Smiles: A Sophomore’s Dental Mission Trip to Mexico
This is a unique podcast as I have interviewed a student prior to her first service-learning trip ... and at 22:30 the interview continues 5 weeks later post-trip!Curiosity meets courage when a sophomore pre-dental studen...
How An International Service Trip Shaped A Clinical Pharmacist’s Career
A fast-track pharmacy degree, night shifts in critical care, and a formative service trip to Costa Rica—Helen Knoche's story is a blueprint for purpose-driven practice. We sit down to trace how a love of chemistry evolved into a role where timi...
From Peace Corps To International Affairs: How Service Learning Shapes Global Careers
What if the most important tool you carry into a community isn’t a stethoscope or a syllabus, but a few words in the local language and a willingness to listen? That question threads through our conversation with Chrissie Faupel—Returned Peace ...
Guiding Future Nurses Toward Purpose, Practice, And Possibility
Nurses save lives—and that simple truth reshaped Dr. Patrick “Dr. H” Hickey’s destiny five decades ago. Our conversation with Dr. H blends grit, humor, and deep professional insight to help you decide whether nursing is your calling and how to ...
How International Service Shaped A Career In Clinical Research And Compassionate Care
What if a single week abroad could change the way you practice medicine for life? We sit down with Naimick Patel to follow his journey from curious freshman to student leader to oncology clinical research coordinator, connecting vivid field exp...
How Service Learning Shaped A Career In Public Health
What if one week abroad could reset your definition of impact? We sit down with Olivia Albanese Gordon to map the winding road from pre‑med requirements and ER shadowing to trip leadership in Nicaragua, an MPH from Johns Hopkins, and a mission‑...
Organ Donation, Global Service, And A Med School Journey
A phone call with an acceptance to medical school. A night flight to a donor hospital. A child’s rash spotted during a game and treated just before the bus pulled away. This is how Shelby’s winding path—public health, Teach for America, transpl...
How International Service Shaped A DO’s Path
A few weeks in unfamiliar clinics can change a career. Emma joins us to share how three undergraduate service trips—Belize, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua—steered her toward osteopathic medicine, shaped her values in family practice, and sharpened t...
How Service Learning Shaped An OBGYN’s Purpose
What if the most important clinical tool isn’t in your pocket but in your posture toward people? We sit down with Dr. Katie Lucas, an OBGYN whose career was shaped by service learning in Belize and Nicaragua, and follow the throughline from ope...
How A Family Doctor Uses Faith To Navigate Suffering, Service, And The System
A house call in the morning, a hospital admission by noon, and a seminar on suffering by night—that’s the rhythm our guest lives as a family physician in direct primary care and a fellow with Duke’s Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative. W...
From Student Nurse To Global Healer
A young nurse fits an elder with her first pair of glasses, and everything changes—her patient’s world, and her own career path. That moment in a Guatemala clinic becomes the springboard for a wide-ranging conversation with Aubrey Hetland, BSN ...
From Mission Trips to the ER
A single sentence can change a life. For Blake Jones, it was a cold prediction at 16 that pushed him toward medicine with a vow to lead with skill and compassion. Years later, two service learning trips—first to Costa Rica, then Guatemala—turne...
Service That Sticks
What if the most powerful thing you bring to clinic isn’t a medication but a moment of calm and a clear explanation? That question runs through our conversation with Maddie Huff, a recent public health graduate and future physician whose path w...
Inside International Service Learning With Executive Director Jonathan Birnbaum
A rainy roadside in Costa Rica changed everything. Jonathan Birnbaum watched buses pause for photos and press on, while he and his family stepped out to help. That simple choice grew into International Service Learning, an education-first, heal...
