MedTreks Launches Kenya Clinical Immersion Program

February 4, 2024 - By Ariane Rasori

We are excited to share that we have officially launched our MedTreks Kenya Clinical Immersion program with Village HopeCore International! After several years of planning and a several year set-back by the pandemic, in January of 2024 MedTreks and HopeCore hosted 11 Nurse Practitioner students and 2 faculty from the University of San Francisco, California.

The lead faculty on this inaugural trip was Dr. Deepika Goyal. Dr. Goyal has been attending the MedTreks Kenya trips for the past several years and was determined to help build this program for the Nurse Practitioner students at USF.

She shares her experience below:

I was first introduced to Village HopeCore International in August 2019 during a MedTreks trip and was extremely impressed with the dedication and compassionate care provided by the nurses, community health officers, and community health promoters along HopeCore’s many initiatives to enhance health and wellbeing of the community. It is clear that the community would not thrive without all of the initiatives that HopeCore provides: providing health to mothers and children; providing clean drinking water and deworming treatment in schools; and offering antenatal/family planning clinics. I have continued to return to Chogoria and work with HopeCore, this was my 6th trip!

Teaching in a nurse practitioner (NP) program at the University of San Francisco and having the same issues as many other schools, locating women’s health and pediatric clinical sites, I immediately thought how amazing it would be students to see all of the good work that HopeCore does and work side by side with the HopeCore nurses.

Partnering with HopeCore for a NP clinical immersion, an easy decision!

Our 11 NP students (9 family and 2 psychiatric) and two faculty were able to see several clinical environments (HopeCore antenatal/family planning clinic, maternal child health mobile outreach clinics, and school health clinics). Students also had the opportunity to make home visits with community health promoters (CHP) and see firsthand the impact of door-to-door education. The NP students who accompanied the CHP were also able to provide wound care, address elevated blood pressures, and provide additional advice. The vast range of experiences made this an excellent clinical experience.

Things that went really well over the 2-week clinical immersion was the warm and welcoming reception from everyone at HopeCore, the ease of working with staff to assign students to the different clinical sites, and seeing firsthand how NP students and HopeCore nurses collaborated with and learned from each other.

We are excited to continue offering this clinical immersion program!