LIMM provided a $1,500 grant to Steph Schulte for a Wound Care certification course. Steph and her husband, Rev. Gary Schulte, will soon depart for Togo, West Africa, where Gary will continue his role as LCMS West Africa Area Director and Steph will function as West Africa Coordinator,”facilitating and coordinating Community Health Education (CHE) initiatives, health clinics and the deployment of Mercy Medical Teams (MMTs) to this part of Africa.”
Below are a thank you from Steph and photos from her class:
Dear Rita and the rest of the members of LIMM,
I cannot thank you enough for your very generous support which allowed me to take this Wound Care Certification course at Emory University. The class has been incredibly informative and I believe will be extremely helpful for the things that I am sure I will see in West Africa. In addition to learning about situation appropriate means of dealing with wounds I have begun to develop a network of people I can come to for help. Both the former director/founder of the program and the current director insisted that I keep in touch and contact them if I have questions about a certain wound.
We learned how to classify wounds by either arterial or venous problems and what I can do for the different types of wounds in West Africa. We learned how to debride necrotic wounds chemically, enzymatically or with sharp instruments. All in ways that will be easily duplicated once Gary and I are deployed.
We also spent a day working on feet – assessing for problems, paring calluses, trimming nails, packing ingrown nails, etc. I even took care of someone’s feet who had been a missionary in Israel for 30 years and we learned that we had common friends!
I return home today and will take my final exam on Monday. Then I will spend 40 hours in clinicals at Barnes, turn in some final assignments and then sit for the national board exam. I hope to have all of this done by the end of May so I can then focus on actually moving to Burkina Faso!
I’ve attached a few pictures from the week. Again, thank you so very much for your support!!
In Him,
Stephanie
Dissection used to classify wounds
Steph Schulte on the left
Since Emory was literally right next to the CDC, she was able to tour their museum where they had a special exhibit on the Ebola outbreak
