Conflicts and culture shocks: A GP’s experience on the frontline

‘We’re huddling in our safe room and there’s a plane flying overhead dropping bombs.
 
‘We’re sitting there listening to the huge crash of the explosions coming out of the sky.
 
‘It’s very tangible – we’re there on the ground, we have the direct contact with these populations, we’re able to provide them with some hope and support, and in some cases, save their life.’
 
For Dr Lisa Searle, her medical career has taken her down a path unfamiliar to many of her peers.
 
From Pakistan to Haiti, Ukraine, Ethiopia, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Tasmanian-born GP has travelled the world to provide medical care where it is most needed.
 
In April, she returned home from Sudan, where she has lived for much of the past year.
 
‘It’s been an amazing journey,’ Dr Searle told newsGP.
 
‘It’s a whirlwind of adventures – always in a different place and working in a different context, different languages, and in different cultures.’
 
It has now been 15 years since Dr Searle embarked on her first assignment with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, but her drive to help others began long before.
 
‘I’d always been very aware of the privilege that I had growing up and how lucky I was to have been born into a place like Tasmania and born into a family where it was a very safe and loving household,’ she said.
 
‘I went through my medical studies here and it was always with a view to doing humanitarian medical work.
 
‘I was always much more interested in working as a doctor in war zones, and in precarious situations, highly insecure contexts, and resource-poor settings – that was what drew me to medicine.’
 
Dr Searle started her MSF career in Pakistan, working in a hospital on the Pakistan–Afghanistan border for nine months.
 
‘Then I went to work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, and I’ve since been back there a few times, so DRC has become one of the countries that I’ve spent the most time living and working in,’ she said.
 
‘I really then spent nearly 10 years circulating around in the French-speaking humanitarian world … then in more recent years, I’ve been working more in the emergency setting, and I’ve been working more in active conflict zones.
 
‘I was in Ukraine right in the beginning of the conflict. I was in the country just a couple weeks after the first bomb started falling.
 
‘I was integrated in northern Ethiopia as well when there was a very bloody war there a couple years ago, and I’ve been working more in Haiti.’
 
During this time, Dr Searle has seen it all – injuries, infections, violence and casualties.
 
Alongside an extensive team around her, Dr Searle must work in these conditions often with little or no medical equipment.
 
‘One of the things that really sets this apart from working in a rich Western country like Australia is the lack of infrastructure, the lack of social services, and the lack of good governance that provides that safety net for the population,’ she said.
 
‘We don’t even have an x-ray machine; we can’t even do a basic blood test – we don’t have any of that.
 
‘It’s always a really stark contrast for me coming back, from working in places like that to coming back to Australia, and just the freedom and the luxury of being able to stand outside and look up at the sky and know that there’s not going to be any bombs falling out of the sky.’
 
And while Dr Searle has managed a lot of traumatic injuries, she says it is the indirect effects of war which often cause more despair.
 
‘Malnutrition and malaria – these are really simple things that are so easy to treat and also to prevent, but the capacity to prevent them and the capacity to treat them just doesn’t exist in these places,’ she said.
 
With almost 50,000 staff worldwide, MSF has delivered emergency medical aid to people in crisis in more than 70 countries.
 
For Dr Searle, it is a career path she admits can be scary at times, but one she plans to follow for many years to come. 
 
‘It’s such incredibly rewarding work, honestly, I can’t think of a job that could be more meaningful and more impactful,’ she said.
 
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