Virgin Islanders, Dr Amber V. Wheatley and Joshua Wheatley pictured here during the medical confab. Photo: Provided

Dr Amber V. Wheatley and Joshua Wheatley during one of the working sessions at the medical conference. Photo: Provided

The two—Dr Amber V. Wheatley and Joshua Wheatley—gave a presentation to members of the international medical community, on the, ‘attitudes of medical students in the Caribbean on family medicine as a career.’

It was explained that similar projects had been done in various countries but there was no literature on the subject from the Caribbean.

Landing in Seoul at 8:00 AM on October 17, 2018 for a 1:00PM presentation, Dr Wheatley said “we spent most of our 12-hour flight rehearsing our presentation and the remaining time in shock that we were actually going to be presenting in Korea.”

Understatement

Having landed, she said, “to say we hit the ground running was an understatement…we went straight from the airport into a meeting for WONCA Polaris, the North American Young Doctors Movement,” since ”one of the concerns of Polaris is that the Caribbean region is getting left out/left behind and Polaris was struggling to help.”

According to Dr Wheatley after the meeting, my purpose for this trip was re-iterated, the Caribbean needs to have their voice heard…Josh and I rehearsed our presentation one last time and then allowed ourselves 10 minutes rest on the conference room floor…We were so tired that I was even falling asleep as our presentation was being announced but we had a mission!”

Medical Student

Young Joshua Wheatley spoke to the medical conference on his experience as a medical student at St George’s University, Grenada and “we succeeded and representing the voice of Caribbean medical students.”

Dr Wheatley told Virgin Islands News Online, “…while at the conference we got to learn as much as share information…we attended a session on the experiences of being a black medical professional in Brazil and got to hear how different medical centres dealt with discrimination in the workplace.”

Joshua attended a session on disaster relief hosted by doctors who work in Puerto Rico after hurricane Irma and “we learned about effective leadership and what plans need to be in place to bring about real change.”

Balling on a budget in Seoul, Dr Wheatley noted that the two did manage to try a traditional Korean meal comprised of several foods “that I could not readily identify, we visited a temple and brought ourselves good luck for the future.”