THE MOMENT I FELL IN LOVE WITH GMB AND ITS MISSION

I was sitting in the 2 hour bus ride home from our third clinic day when it hit me. I looked around at the sea of brigaders laughing and talking, when just one week prior we were strangers. I looked at the front of the bus at our doctors who were our medical heroes of the trip and who inspired me during consultation. And then I looked on my phone at the pictures I had taken of children and families who were the sole reason of why we brigade. The gratitude and happiness they expressed to us throughout the days was astonishing. What hit me was that there wasn’t one time during this brigade that I wasn’t inspired by everything around me. Inspired that we were making a change but also inspired to continue to make a change. This was the moment when I fell in love with Global Medical Brigades and its mission.

Global Medical Brigades was a great learning experience for me. I am a Behavioral Neuroscience major and because I’m not pre-med I hadn’t been exposed to any clinical work before. I gained so many skills while working in triage, skills that I wouldn’t have been able to practice if it weren’t for the brigade. I also gained a lot by being surrounded by the other brigaders. We had a great mix of nurses, pre-med, pre-dental, pre-PA, and pharmacy students that I could learn from. Being exposed to dedicated people like this motivated me to challenge myself during the trip and even when I came home.

Even if you have the slightest interest in the healthcare field I urge you to go on this trip. Global Medical Brigades has something for everyone. Every day was a learning experience and I gained so much more than I expected. I was a complete beginner at taking vitals and also in the pharmacy. What’s great about this trip was that everyone was so eager to help you learn and improve on new skills. One night we even had a last minute teaching session on how to take blood pressure which was led by the nurses and EMT students. This helped me so much the next day during the clinic and made me feel confident about my abilities. GMB is the one place on campus where I’ve felt truly at home and made genuine bonds with all of the people I met.