Ancillary and complimentary approaches to patient care and well being would be an integral part of MIST and go hand in hand with limb reconstruction to facilitate the best outcomes.
The learning and sharing of knowledge is a fundamental part of life in medicine. It remains to this day as a core component of the MIST ethos.
The concept of a patient centred limb reconstruction charity which would also be able to educate and train surgeons and staff locally to provide a self sustaining facility was thus born.
MIST deployed its first ever team to Pakistan in November 2005, just four weeks after the devastating South Asian earthquake.
In keeping with the MIST vision of total patient care, that first team consisted of the surgical team, a physiotherapist and a psychologist. A Limb Reconstruction Unit (LRU) was established with the remit of restoring patients to function in mind, body and life.
With hundreds of people requiring treatment it was important to have continuity of care. Teams rotated on a 2-weekly basis. Each following team would then continue to manage the patients already treated and also to operate on new patients.
MIST had identified the need for a more sustainable model suitable for developing countries with a patient focused continuity of care model and a method that allowed the reusability of the equipment necessary to provide limb reconstruction.
Over the subsequent years, it became clear that a local LRU could manage complex injuries and in future become a centre of excellence, with the help of MIST.
In 2009, MIST started its programme of teaching and training of surgeons and AHP’s in the art of limb reconstruction and became a Foundation.
MIST employs limb reconstruction techniques using an orthoplastic approach which helps minimise the number of surgical interventions a patient needs thus improving their outcome.
Post-operative management of patients is paramount to MIST. Helping with mental health issues, physiotherapy, wound and fixator care are all equally important and provided for under MIST care.
Since that first deployment to Pakistan in 2005, MIST has assisted in Gaza, Libya, Cambodia and Nepal.
MIST has helped establish LRU’s in Palestine & Pakistan.
