Reflections on mission trip by student Cristina Morales
My recent trip to San Raymundo, Guatemala with Dr. Dylan Patrick and his team from Storybook Smiles in Tyler, Texas was an incredible experience. I met up with a team of about 25 people in Guatemala City, that consisted of dentists, dental assistants, dental hygienists, senior SRNA students from University of Arizona, a pediatric dental anesthesia team, and others, where we traveled about 2.5 hours to work at a small rural hospital providing all types of dental care for pediatric patients. A large part of the team ran dental hygiene clinics in one part of the building where they saw around 150 pediatric patients a day for cleanings. The other portion of the team (myself included) created a dental OR, that allowed us to run 3 general anesthesia cases at a time for the difficult dental procedures. In 4 days, the OR performed 89 general anesthetics for children ages 2-12. It was an incredible feat to create an OR (anesthesia machines had just been donated, so we had to set those up), run full perioperative services, and serve that many families, of whom many had walked hours to get there. All services, time, and resources were bought or donated by the team, as the families were extremely impoverished. The dental work on many of these patients was extensive, and many children came in with severe dental pain, abscesses, rotten teeth, etc. Even though some of these families had to wait all day for the services, all of them were so incredibly polite and grateful, and it was an incredible honor to gain their trust to take care of their children. The experience for me, as an SRNA about to graduate in August was invaluable. There was so much creative thinking to try and compensate for some of the anesthesia resources that we did not have, which allowed me to simplify my practice, concentrate on my skills, and boosted my confidence to be a CRNA in the near future. I was extremely humbled and honored for the opportunity to do this work and look forward to working with them again.