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The team mentored and taught local orthopaedic and plastic surgery residents and held oral examinations for the hospital's second-year plastic surgery residents.

A team of orthopaedic surgeons and students from The University of Arizona is back in Tucson after a weeklong volunteer trip to Honduras.

Dr. Joseph Sheppard headed the group that performed, at no charge, more than 40 hand, elbow and shoulder operations at Hospital Escuela, the teaching hospital in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.

Sheppard, a hand and microvascular surgeon, is an associate professor of clinical orthopaedic surgery at the UA College of Medicine. The others on the trip included Dr. John Ruth, a truama surgeon who heads the UA orthopaedic surgery department, Dr. Shoaib Sheikh, a hand surgeon in the department, Dr. Jolene Clark, a fourth-year orthopaedic surgery resident, and Megan Meislin, a fourth-year UA medical student who wants to pursue orthopaedic surgery.

This latest mission is nothing new for Sheppard, who has volunteered with Hand Surgeries Overseas, a program of Health Volunteers Overseas, for the last five years.

Health Volunteers Overseas is a private, nonprofit organization that is dedicated to improving the availability and quality of health care in developing countries through the training and education of local health care providers.

Sheppard and the others also mentored and lectured to the orthopaedic and plastic surgery residents at Hospital Escuela and held oral examinations for the hospital's second-year plastic surgery residents.

"Over the past five years, many changes have been observed at the Hospital Escuela in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Importantly, a cooperative effort between the Departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and Plastic Surgery at the Hospital Escuela is starting to unfold. With Dr. Ruth's assistance, a new collaboration with the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Hospital Escuela and the University of Arizona can ensue. It is hoped that an exchange program with the University of Arizona and Honduran residents can occur, providing benefits to both," Dr. Sheppard said. 

Sheppard said many of the injuries the team treated are the result of mishaps with machetes, complications from infections and trauma from car accidents.

"Hand injuries are extremely common and are the most seen trauma in the emergency room. We underestimate the role of the hand as a tool, but hands allow us to live the life we appreciate," Sheppard said.

Of the millions of work-related injuries treated in U.S. emergency rooms, hands and fingers are the most commonly treated body part, according to a report published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Sheppard spends most of the year preparing for these volunteer trips by collecting donated supplies and equipment for the surgeries. With the aid and support of the U.S. orthopaedic community and industry manufacturers, Sheppard often secures hundreds of pounds of supplies for his missions.

Medical supplies that are readily found in the U.S. can often be in short supply, or even entirely unknown, in Central American hospitals. 

"Supplies we take for granted, that we discard in everyday practice, supplies we normally throw away in the U.S., are used every day, over and over again, in Honduras," Sheppard said.

Sheppard's annual visits have earned him recognition as an honorary faculty member of the Honduran Plastic Surgery Training Program at Hospital Escuela.

"The knowledge and surgical expertise that Drs. Sheppard, Ruth and Sheikh share, helps to augment the residency training curriculum at the Hospital Escuela, providing a unique training opportunity for Dr. Clark and Megan Meislin," said Phyllis P. Goldstein, administrative assistant in the UA orthopaedic surgery department.