By Jennifer Kearney-Strouse
Those attending "Caring for Migrants, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers: The Physician’s Role" on Saturday morning will get the benefit of two viewpoints, according to course director Tseganesh Selameab, MD, FACP.
"The ask for us was to talk about the U.S. perspective, and then bring in this international perspective," Dr. Selameab said.
Dr. Selameab will review the basics of caring for the migrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking populations in the U.S. health care system, while her co-director, Monica R.A. Pachar Flores, MD, DClinSci, DTM&H, FACP, will review case studies and provide examples to illustrate what patients have gone through to get to the United States.
"In a lot of ways, we're privileged in what we see in the community, the immigrants and refugees and migrants that we take care of," said Dr. Selameab, who is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis and Governor for ACP's Minnesota Chapter. "It's very different when you're seeing someone in clinic versus you're seeing someone on the route in midst of migration."
By offering both sides of the story, Drs. Selameab and Pachar Flores aim to illustrate that U.S. medicine is truly part of a global community and that familiarity with the immigrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking community is part of internal medicine physicians' core competencies, Dr. Selameab said.
"I hope that this will, if you do this work, be reaffirming. …but if you haven't, or you haven't really thought through this, that you will be able to at least have a starting point to understand the problem and also understand how we have a role in it, as clinicians, as advocates, and really as global citizens who are all in this together," she said. ■