Medical Mission Takes SMU College of Podiatric Medicine Students to Peru

This May, a group of eight Samuel Merritt University (SMU) College of Podiatric Medicine (CPM) students traveled to Cusco, Peru on a ten-day self-organized medical mission, providing care to hundreds of patients while gaining invaluable clinical experience and a new vision for their future as physicians.

Making the Trip a Reality

CPM has a long tradition of medical mission work, though historically it stayed close to home until last year, when a group of students traveled to the Dominican Republic for a medical mission trip.

Fourth-year doctor of podiatric medicine (DPM) students Nick Vang ’27 and Jenny Yuan ’27, who led the trip to Peru, saw the DR trip as a jumping-off point to build a medical mission initiative around podiatry and lower-extremity care. Weighing travel time, accessibility, and cost, they decided on Peru as the best option.

The effort was entirely student-driven—the organizing team fundraised independently, reaching out to alumni and local podiatrists to make their case. The money raised had to stretch as far as possible, and students who participated contributed their own resources driven by a deep motivation to learn and serve in equal measure.

Applying Suitcase Clinics Abroad

Though the international setting was new, the clinical work was not. Many students had already built a foundation of similar outreach efforts through the Suitcase Clinic in Berkeley, a UC Berkeley-run program providing screenings and basic care for the city’s underserved populations. 

A typical day at Suitcase Clinic might mean seeing 10 to 15 patients; in Peru, clinics saw 50 to 60 patients a day. That pace pushed students to translate skills into a faster environment, while giving each of them far more hands-on time with patients than they’d typically get at home.

Service and Learning in Peru

The clinical scope extended well beyond podiatry. Working at a clinic alongside a neurologist and internal medicine physician, students learned to perform general physical exams, take vitals, blood pressure readings, and check glucose levels, developing skills they would not typically learn in the DPM program. 

The group also spent a day shadowing providers across Peru’s healthcare system, all under the guidance of their attending physician, Dr. Yessika Woo Lee. While some students paired with a podiatry technician, others rotated through the ER, and one even scrubbed into a surgery, an opportunity that typically doesn’t come until much later in a podiatry student’s training in the U.S. 

Dr. Woo Lee, an SMU DPM ’20 alum and podiatrist for UCSF MarinHealth, found the students eager to learn, making her role as an attending easy. “It is very humbling to be surrounded by the future of our profession,” she said. “They are passionate about our profession enough to take a week out of their lives to serve a community that very much needs their services.”

Second-year DPM student Maya Patel learned the importance of practicing whole-body medicine, a concept Dr. Woo Lee emphasized throughout the trip, hoping to instill that “a good clinician is like a good detective, your patient will give you all the information you will need, you just have to listen.”

Since many patients weren’t there for foot-related issues, students had to rely on asking the right questions and understanding anatomy to deduce the underlying problem as Patel did when she recognized a patient’s back-to-leg pain as a symptom of a UTI.

Beyond the clinical work, the trip built in a strong cultural component each day. Students took part in activities like salsa dancing, learning to make ceviche, and exploring downtown—experiences that added another layer of value to the trip. The group also gathered with Dr. Woo Lee each evening to review case studies, reflect on the day, and build on their clinical knowledge together.

Affirming the Decision to Pursue Podiatry

“Anytime you travel to a new place, you are exposing yourself to new people and new lessons to learn,” commented Dr. Woo Lee. Her hope is that this experience gives them a unique insight into global health and healthcare equity.

For Komal Rana, a second-year DPM student, working with a diverse patient population stood out as a highlight. “We were working around the language barriers, and at one point it wasn’t just Spanish that we were working with. We were working with individuals who spoke Quechua, so we had two translators in between us.” She describes the experience as humbling, one that showed her just how far medicine can go and reminded her why podiatry is her calling.

Rana’s classmate, second-year DPM student Samantha Valle pointed to patient education as a critical gap. She recalled patients treating wounds with egg whites, unaware of the infection risk, simply because it was knowledge passed down through their community. “It showed me the importance of educating patients,” she said. For Valle, the trip underscored a responsibility she hopes to carry into her career.

For Vang this same realization has already shaped his goals. “I want to be in a position where I can also provide the resources to people. It begins for me with educating people. I would love to do these kinds of mission trips in the future, educate the population we’re seeing…and also make an emphasis about the importance of podiatry in global health.”