Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
BMC Health Serv Res. 2012 May 29;12:134. doi: 10.1186/1472-6963-12-134.
Healthcare professionals' participation in short-term medical missions to low and middle income countries (LMIC) to provide healthcare has become common over the past 50 years yet little is known about the quantity and quality of these missions. The aim of this study was to review medical mission publications over 25 years to better understand missions and their potential impact on health systems in LMICs.
A literature review was conducted by searching Medline for articles published from 1985-2009 about medical missions to LMICs, revealing 2512 publications. Exclusion criteria such as receiving country and mission length were applied, leaving 230 relevant articles. A data extraction sheet was used to collect information, including sending/receiving countries and funding source.
The majority of articles were descriptive and lacked contextual or theoretical analysis. Most missions were short-term (1 day - 1 month). The most common sending countries were the U.S. and Canada. The top destination country was Honduras, while regionally Africa received the highest number of missions. Health care professionals typically responded to presenting health needs, ranging from primary care to surgical relief. Cleft lip/palate surgeries were the next most common type of care provided.
Based on the articles reviewed, there is significant scope for improvement in mission planning, monitoring and evaluation as well as global and/or national policies regarding foreign medical missions. To promote optimum performance by mission staff, training in such areas as cross-cultural communication and contextual realities of mission sites should be provided. With the large number of missions conducted worldwide, efforts to ensure efficacy, harmonisation with existing government programming and transparency are needed.
在过去的 50 年中，医疗专业人员参与到中低收入国家（LMIC）的短期医疗任务中，为当地提供医疗服务已经变得非常普遍，但对于这些任务的数量和质量却知之甚少。本研究旨在对过去 25 年的医疗任务文献进行综述，以便更好地了解这些任务及其对 LMIC 卫生系统的潜在影响。
通过在 Medline 上搜索 1985 年至 2009 年期间关于向 LMIC 派遣医疗任务的文章，进行文献回顾，共发现 2512 篇出版物。应用排除标准，如接收国和任务长度，最终留下 230 篇相关文章。使用数据提取表收集信息，包括派遣国和接收国以及资金来源。
大多数文章是描述性的，缺乏背景或理论分析。大多数任务都是短期的（1 天至 1 个月）。派遣国主要来自美国和加拿大。最受欢迎的目的地国家是洪都拉斯，而非洲地区则收到了最多的任务。医疗专业人员通常会根据现有的医疗需求做出回应，范围从初级保健到外科手术。唇腭裂手术是下一种常见的护理类型。
根据综述的文章，在任务规划、监测和评估方面，以及关于外国医疗任务的全球和/或国家政策方面，都有很大的改进空间。为了促进任务人员的最佳表现，应该提供跨文化交流和任务地点背景现实等领域的培训。鉴于全球范围内进行的大量任务，需要努力确保其有效性、与现有政府规划的协调性和透明度。
