Second, consider contacting emergency medicine and general physician professional organizations (see Table 1). Third, you may want to join professional international groups such as ACEP’s International or Disaster Medicine Sections and SAEM’s Global Emergency Medicine Academy (GEMA). While at their meetings, ask other attendees about international opportunities. You can find additional leads from religious groups with which you are affiliated; many have active international medical missions. Finally, when traveling abroad, consider contacting health care facilities or expatriate volunteer physicians directly to see if your services are needed.

Vetting the Organizations

Once you have identified potential organizations, it’s time to assess them with your personal criteria.
Organizations come in a multitude of flavors. First, look at their mission statement. That may seem boring, but it tells you a lot about what they expect volunteers to do onsite. It will also tell you whether their mission is consistent with your goals. Finally, it will indicate whether you generally qualify to work with them. For example, many nonsecular religious groups only take people of their faith, and some of these groups see proselytizing (converting others) as their primary interest.

Table 2 describes typical variations among global medical organizations. I like to distinguish between those I think of as legitimate and those that are illegitimate. Legitimate organizations strive to provide long-term, sustainable changes to a health care system, illustrating the timeless adage, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Within emergency medicine, that usually involves establishing and working at an international EM residency or other long-term education and research programs. In acute disaster situations, while one can occasionally teach, the goal is to provide urgently needed care. In contrast, illegitimate organizations, like the one advertising the $5,000 trip, rarely provide medical service. Similarly, some government-sponsored missions only provide superficial treatment for public relations purposes.

Dr. Iserson is a fellow of the International Federation for Emergency Medicine and professor emeritus in the department of emergency medicine at The University of Arizona in Tucson.