BY CHARLES SORCE, STAFF WRITER
Students without Borders (SWOB) visited the village of Ramon Santana in the Dominican Republic on a medical mission from March 14 through March 21.
“We are a group of [physician assistant] students that run a medical mission trip to the Dominican Republic each year and we have a lot of fundraising efforts to fund the costs for this trip,” said Antonio Simora, a third year PA student and the organization’s president.
SWOB has been putting this trip together since 2023. To fundraise for the project, students held spaghetti dinners, a haunted house and pop-up donation tables around the communities of Olean and Allegany.
Some of the students and the executive board planned this mission with help from the coordinator for Pathway Dominicana, Feleicia Germain, who let them know what villages needed the most healthcare assistance, including the village of Ramon Santana.
“We were primarily based in Ramon Santana and we set up the clinic in a church two days before we actually [began seeing patients],” said Thamid Rahman, a third year PA student and organization’s vice president.
The stations ranged from eye treatment to gynecological treatment, with many other specific care stations in between.
Some students on the trip said that the experience was very eye-opening; to be able to see how people in different countries live such different lives was inspiring. Other students said that they felt encouraged by the resilience their patients showed. One patient that the students encountered had a broken leg for quite a while, yet this was the first time he was able to receive medical attention for it.
“We’re very lucky with the amount of access to healthcare that we have in the United States,” said Grace Marnell, a third year PA student and the organization’s treasurer.
Additionally, these students were able to reinforce their learning with patient contact and learned how to talk to patients as a person, not as a number. Despite the language barrier and having to work alongside translators, students ensured that every patient felt heard and everybody was given the time and attention they needed.
“Being able to take the time to sit there with them and console them was important to me,” said Olivia Scheffler, a third year PA student and the organization’s social media outreach coordinator.
Jeffrey Szymanski, the club’s current advisor, said he wanted to enforce that students can gain experience without using modern medical machinery or tools and instead must fall back on their own judgement and physical exam skills.
“We don’t have an X-ray, we don’t have ultrasound and we don’t have a lab, so you have to make clinical decisions without those crutches that we have in the United States,” said Szymanski. “You have to use your brain.”
To see more of SWOB and what it’s all about, as well as the Bonaventure PA program, follow @SBU_SWOB and @bonas_paprogram on Instagram.
