Humanitarian Action & Conflict with Johnathan Povey

World Extreme Medicine Podcast

In this episode we chat with Johnathan Povey, Operating Department Practitioner (ODP) turned humanitarian clinician. Johnathan speaks of his multiple deployments to various contexts from an initial humanitarian training course in 2012. He recalls some of his most challenging cases, teams and contexts that he has had to work in over 11 years in humanitarian conflict and disaster.

We also cover in the conversation; indigenous groups and challenges of integration and acceptance. Collaboration of teams and multiple teams coming together to form a multi-specialist response. We talk of Johnathan’s challenges with crises in Sub-Saharan Africa and how he dealt with some of the challenges the pandemic presented in practical ways. We look into the clinical challenges that Johnathan has overcome and how he has adapted some of the training and cultural norms to arrive at the best result for a multitude of patients.

We also cover some of the humanitarian technical specialism’s that exist within the sector outside of healthcare. We finally examine some of the learning points that Johnathan has taken from his trips and how he adapted and maintained a flexible approach. Johnathan also talks about maintaining an open-minded approach in a dynamic and ever-changing clinical and operational context.

Some of the links that Johnathan was referring to can be found here:

https://www.who.int/hac/global_health_cluster/fmt_concept_paper_27may2011.pdf?ua=1

https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/documents/publications/classification-and-minimum-standards-for-foreign-medical-teams-in-suddent-onset-disasters65829584-c349-4f98-b828-f2ffff4fe089.pdf?sfvrsn=43a8b2f1_1

https://www.uk-med.org/

https://www.uk-med.org/vacancies/