It’s been about a month since Dr. Harika Yadav returned from providing medical care to Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border, and the young doctor said the experience not only made her a better physician, but also a stronger advocate for service opportunities in graduate medical education.
As a second-year internal medicine resident at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine Chattanooga, Yadav works up to 80 hours a week at Erlanger Health System – the residency program’s affiliate – and gets three weeks of vacation a year. She decided to spend one of those weeks pursuing a personal and professional goal of providing medical aid to people involved in an international crisis.
Yadav was stationed at a refugee camp in Medyka – the busiest pedestrian border crossing between Poland and Ukraine – as a volunteer with an Israeli-run nongovernmental organization called Sauveteurs Sans Frontières or rescuers without borders.
The Sauveteurs Sans Frontières tent is one of two medical clinics at the camp and the first tent refugees encounter once crossing into Poland, so it’s often their first stop when entering the country, she said.
Most of the refugees are women, children and family members of soldiers fleeing the Russian invasion or trying to find lost loved ones. Since she was caring primarily for civilians. Yadav said the patients she saw often needed treatment for chronic conditions, help getting medication, education or just someone to talk to.