Leading a STM Medical Team

Overarching Principles

Leading a medical short-term mission (STM) trip can be a most rewarding experience, yielding great satisfaction in the work accomplished and the relationships made or deepened. Yet this also can be daunting in the scope and size of the administrative puzzle that must come together in a successful trip. Careful attention to detail, advance planning, knowing what lies ahead, and thinking through contingency plans to be implemented when problems arise all are skills and strategies that help the leader achieve success. This Guide hopes to serve you in these areas of planning and thinking through what might lie ahead.

Many people assume that the medical team leader will be a physician or nurse, but this is not necessarily either true or desirable. Medical leadership is certainly required for the medical component of the work that will be done, but in order for the team to function at all there are many non-medical issues to be addressed and planned. Often this is best accomplished by a non-medical person gifted in administration. This Guide primarily addresses the non-medical leadership of the trip. This leadership must intersect often and well with the medical leadership, but the team leader should be "the" go-to leader for the purposes of keeping the team on schedule, safe, secure, and spiritually healthy.

In this section of the Guide we will look at the overarching principles to keep in front of us as we plan and implement the trip. This includes the overarching roles for the team leader, the goals for the trip itself, and the overall timeline for making a trip such as this come to fruition.

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