Stories & reflections

Guatemala 2020 — Health Clinics, Languages, Culture on the Cusp of a Pandemic

A Wrinkle In Time could well describe our Guatemala 2020 medical trip. In late February our medical team left behind our customary lifestyles in the USA to offer clinics in Guatemala sponsored by Hands for Health Foundation and Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Bows, Arrows, Lakotas, Osteopaths, and Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

Consider the bow and arrow, and imagine yourself on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota at the second annual health fair of the Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine, May 3–4, 2019.

Guatemala | Bounding & Rebounding!

Sights and insights abounded in the 2019 Guatemala trip in March 2–10. Team members included a first-year student who described collaboration among fellow medical students as well as a sense of being daunted and undaunted.

Carol Sullivan

Porcupine Powwow: a surprising kinship with osteopathy

Osteopaths may share a surprising kinship with Lakotas when it comes to a holistic view of health. Second-year RVU medical students on the trip, who numbered ten, made these medical and cultural observations.

Carol Sullivan

Guatemala | When Tears Crept Close in Guatemala — reflections on a 4-year-old patient

On the school global outreach trip to Guatemala, a particularly difficult patient encounter allowed me to reflect on my fears and anxieties about entering the clinical years of my medical education.

Alexandra Lee

Closer to Home | Pine Ridge Reservation — a people, a health fair, and their vitality

Statistics are slippery — they can describe, decry, and defy what is happening. At a recent two-day health fair on Pine Ridge Reservation, an RVU medical team offered screening and education for health issues.

Carol Sullivan

Guatemala | Ancient and Modern Ways of Serving and Being Served

The things we carried — heaving medical bags and hopes! To Guatemala we came, nineteen students, five physicians, one paramedic, and four community volunteers.

Carol Sullivan

Ecuador 2018 | Trip Journal

Medical students aboard a chicken bus in Ecuador — what do you get?

Carol Sullivan

Kenyan Cases | Restoring sight & hearing, twins who don't cry, bestowing smiles & necklaces, warts that must remain untreated, toughness & strength of will

Dive into the cases directly from our volunteers.