Milwaukee VA doctors volunteer their skills all around the world

• Vascular surgeon Dr. Michael Malinowski is heavily involved in the global health mission as a former U.S. Department of State Fulbright Scholar. His work has taken him to Nepal, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay, where he performs surgeries, furthers medical education and collaborates on shared research projects.
• Plastic surgeon Dr. James Sanger has been traveling to Colombia annually for nearly 40 years to treat residents and help train doctors.
• Emergency Department physician Dr. Jonathan Wiese annually travels to Guatemala to treat residents in remote areas of the country.

None of them get paid for this; they do it out of a sense of duty and responsibility to help.

“There’s a long tradition of surgeons here at the VA helping with global health,” Malinowski said. “I think that’s because we need to challenge ourselves and be involved in helping meet needs internationally.”

Sanger agreed.

“A lot of our people are involved in some type of medical mission, and that’s something I’m very happy about,” he said. “It’s all volunteer. We’re there to do free surgery and to help educate.”

During his trips each February with the Milwaukee Medical Mission, Sanger and other doctors, including other surgeons and therapists from the Milwaukee VA, treat upward of 150 people over nine days. Sanger does a lot of hand surgeries and treats facial deformities and burns.

The group also helped establish a plastic surgery residency at a medical school in Bucaramanga, Sanger said, noting that improving education is part of the program.

“It’s both a humanitarian mission and tied to the medical school and their training program,” he said.

Malinowski has spent his career contributing to educational outreach. His recent trip to Uruguay in 2023 centered on improving the national medical education curriculum in the UdelaR University System (the second largest public university system in South America). 

As part of the Johns Hopkins University School of Education, he teaches international fellows from around the world, who are practicing physicians looking to improve their education skills and talents on other continents.

Both Malinowski and Sanger emphasized that these outreach activities are not one-way streets; it’s not uncommon for them to pick up innovations and techniques that help improve their practice back home.

“Some countries are doing things better than what we can do here,” Malinowski said. “And we get to bring all that skill development back here to our local Veterans.

“When you see the level of challenges in health care internationally, it can really allow us to pivot and hone our attention on what gaps we have here nationally.”

This blends naturally with his work at the Milwaukee VA, which is very much a teaching hospital, with residents and fellows rotating through on an annual basis.

“That definitely helps directly with care of Veterans, because you’re bringing all that education, knowledge and organizational solutions back here,” he said. “It helps reinforce the system.”

“I learn just as much,” Sanger said of his trips to Colombia. “They have to do with much less (than we have), so I always learn tricks and ways to do things that save money. I’ve learned how to be very frugal about resources.

“We interact with a global community, and we learn and become better surgeons,” Sanger said. “Some of the stuff I did for cancer reconstruction here at the VA was influenced by what we saw in Colombia.”

But the doctors said there is even more benefit beyond improving medical training and skills.

“It’s allowed me to realize the true impact I can have outside of my daily life,” Malinowski said. “When we do these things outside of our own daily walls, it allows us to really see the unlimited impact we can have.

“And in well-chosen volunteer opportunities — things that are strategic and not for our own benefit — we can apply our skills and our passions to truly get traction nationally and internationally for these type of projects and grow those collegial networks to lead to more expansion.”

“It’s one of the things I’m proud of in my life,” Sanger said. “The value comes from the thank-you’s from the families. The patients are unbelievably grateful just to be seen, and if you can do something for them, it’s pretty moving.”

Weise agreed.

“They are so grateful and excited to have us there,” he said. “The thankfulness is unbelievable. It’s really special.

“Most of us go into medicine to help people … to be able to practice medicine, truly, with no other agenda than to help people.”