Rebecca McAteer

Member Bio

I am a family physician who is halfway through my first (2-year) term as a medical missionary in the Himalayan foothills of western Nepal. Tansen Mission Hospital, where I serve alongside 8-10 other ex-pat physicians from all over the world, has about forty resident trainees in medicine and surgery, and I rotate coverage through the three main medical departments (adult medicine, pediatrics, maternity). A typical day consists of inpatient rounds with the team for several hours in the morning, and then seeing patients in our outpatient clinics, with roughly one night of overnight call in the hospital per week. The patients we see are often very sick, and many of the diseases they have, though common here, are virtually unseen in the developed world where I did my training. It's definitely a constant learning experience on many levels -- and all in the Nepali language, which I had to learn when I arrived.
After graduating from New York Medical College (NY) and finishing my residency training at Lancaster General Hospital (PA), I worked as an adult hospitalist for one year and then did an academic faculty development fellowship in the Medical Humanities at Georgetown University (DC).
When done with my term in Nepal, I hope to return frequently to Nepal throughout my career, but be ultimately based in the States. My main areas of interest are medical ethics; palliative care; arts/ literature in medicine; and global health.