Gulu University Surgical Equity Society (GUSES) @infoguses

I once read that the word "mentor" comes from a single character in a 3,000-year-old poem about a man who guided a lost young prince not by answering his questions, but by walking beside him until he could answer them himself. Last Saturday, in a Zoom room stretching from Gulu to wherever else our 60+ mentees were logging in from, I watched that same idea play out in real time. Session 7 of the Global Surgery North Star Mentorship Program wasn't a lecture. It was a mirror. Our chief mentor, Dr. Ssennuni Eric @Ericson31210a, stood in front of us, not as a distant authority, but as someone still practicing what he was teaching. He gave us the exact words to send a mentor we're too intimidated to email. He told us mentorship dies the moment it becomes forceful — that a good mentor teaches and guides, never dictates. He was honest enough to admit that even AI now has a seat at this table, not as a replacement for human wisdom, but as a tool that sharpens it, if we let mentorship stay human at its core. As a mentee sitting in that session, and as someone helping coordinate this program, I felt something I didn't expect: recognition. Recognition that every confident diagnosis I hope to make one day, every hard conversation I'll have to hold with a patient, every judgment call in a resource-limited theatre; none of it will be mine alone. It will carry the fingerprints of everyone who ever said, "let me show you." Global surgery in Northern Uganda will not be built by individual brilliance. It will be built the way it always has been — one deliberate mentor-mentee relationship at a time. 🙏 Dr. Ssennuni Eric @Ericson31210a, thank you for teaching us not just how to be mentored, but how to eventually become someone worth mentoring. That is the real work of this program. #GlobalSurgery #GSNSMP2026 #Mentorship #HealthEquity #GuluUniversity #medicalstudent @MunguchiG @ssembuulejohn @InciSioNGlobal @HealthylivesUg @GlobalSurg

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This Saturday, I’m honoured to moderate the 7th GSNSMP session. Our guest speaker Dr. @Ericson31210a is ready to share Knowledge with us on Mentorship. #GSNSMP2026 #MUSS #GUSES #GENCommunityHealthInnitiative

"Surgery saves lives and supports economic productivity." That single line from Mr. Tairu Fofanah reframed how I think about global surgery advocacy, not as a moral appeal alone, but as an economic argument that decision-makers can't ignore. Session 6 of the Global Surgery North Star Mentorship Program 2026, "How the Youth Can Influence Health Policy," delivered exactly what its title promised: a practical roadmap, not just inspiration. A few frameworks I'm taking with me: ✅️The Advocacy Framework: Problem → Evidence → Message → Audience → Action. Mr. Tairu Fofanah broke down advocacy into a repeatable process — not a talent some people have, and others don't, but a skill anyone can learn and apply. "Advocacy starts with evidence." He was specific: research, data, patient stories, and economic analyses are the building blocks of any policy argument that actually moves people. 📌Passion alone doesn't change policy. Passion backed by evidence does. Task sharing in Sierra Leone. He walked us through how his country expanded surgical access through Surgical Community Health Officers, clinical officers trained to deliver essential surgical care where surgeons are scarce. It was a live case study in how policy innovation, once advocated for and adopted, directly saves lives in resource-limited settings. What made this session different was that Mr. Tairu Fofanah wasn't theorizing from a distance. Every framework he shared was one he had personally used to help write Sierra Leone's National Surgical, Obstetric, and Anaesthesia Plan. That's the credibility that makes a mentorship session land. As a mentee and coordinator of this programme, I walked away with something concrete: advocacy isn't a "someday" skill for senior clinicians. It's a process I can start practicing now, starting with the evidence already in front of me. 🙏Grateful to Mr. Tairu Fofanah for his generosity in sharing, and to the entire GSNSMP 2026 team for curating a session this rich. #GlobalSurgery #HealthPolicy #YouthAdvocacy #GSNSMP2026 #HealthEquity #Uganda #SierraLeone @bryn_tumwebaze @Bryan_ksg @HealthylivesUg @InciSioNGlobal @GlobalSurg @OdoraSteph

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7/8: Mentorship in Global Surgery

Asingya Felix Mumbere 🩺 @FelixAsingya

3 months ago

No great doctor, lawyer, or entrepreneur built their career alone. Behind every confident diagnosis, every courtroom victory, every scaled business, there was someone who once said, "let me show you how." Mentorship isn't a nice-to-have in professional life, it's the backbone.

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Good morning family 🌅 Happy Wednesday to us all ✨️ ⏰ 29 DAYS LEFT! Camp Western Uganda isn't just service, it's growth. Real clinical exposure, real networking, real impact. This is where medical students become community healers. 📍 Ntungamo District | 📅 13-16th Aug 2026 Register now ✅️✅️ #CampWesternUganda2026 #FUMSA #29DaysToGo @marvin_lule68 @oketayotmarvin @d37986 @Odorasteph @kiryaWilberfor1 @tomray100 @abaasab13 @Ralph_Yosia @mariajayden233

📢 GUMReC Mentorship Cohort 2026 is OPEN! Apply: forms.gle/tunc1CxSbgMDaQ… Get mentored by our patron, Dr. @dr_bongomin Felix, MD and other experienced researchers as you take a research idea from zero to a published manuscript. 📧 [email protected] | 📞 0766 788 744 #GUMReC

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🔊 *YOU'RE JUST ONE ORDER AWAY FROM BEING GUMITE*💪 With Clinical Gears "at your finger tips"......... Content will also be "at your finger tips....." ✨✨ #FutureMedics #scrubs #Gumsa_official

Behind every person is a story you may never see. Lead with kindness. 💜 #MentalHealthAwareness #passionforlife

🔥🩺 The stethoscopes are out, the energy is high, and the mission is clear! FUMSA Medical Camp is here — bringing free healthcare services, health education, and hope to the community. Because every life matters. ❤️ #FUMSA2026 #Medicalcamp #passionforlife @OfficialFUMSA

🩺✨ Beyond the Classroom Walls! Our Year Two medical students had an inspiring pathology lecture at the Uganda Cancer Institute (UCI), Gulu Branch, gaining firsthand insights into cancer care and the role of pathology in medicine. #futuremedics #passionforlife

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Before a single drop of blood is drawn, something more important has to happen first: trust. 🤍 That's the lesson that stayed with me long after we left the @UgandaCancerIns Uganda Cancer Institute – Gulu Regional Cancer Centre today evening. As MBChB students at @Guluvarsity currently deep in our Hematology and Pathology work, we expected to learn about diagnostic panels and staining techniques. We did. But the most important lesson wasn't scientific — it was human. The laboratory technician who guided us through the hematology-pathology section paused on something most textbooks skip entirely: you cannot draw blood from a cancer patient the way you draw it from anyone else. These are patients already carrying immense physical pain and psychological weight. Many have been through cycles of invasive procedures, uncertain prognoses, and treatments that ask their bodies to endure more before they can heal. For them, a needle isn't routine — it can be one more moment of vulnerability in an already exhausting journey. So before anything clinical happens, the real work begins: sitting with the patient, explaining in language they actually understand; what the test is for, what their condition means, and what the procedure will involve. Not rushed. Not jargon-heavy. Just honest, human communication. 👌That's what real informed consent looks like in oncology. Not a signature. A relationship with a patient. When a patient feels heard and understands why, resistance turns into cooperation, and fear gives way to trust. That trust is what allows supportive, dignified care — physically, mentally, and emotionally — to actually reach the patient. It reframed something for me: in cancer care, communication and emotional intelligence aren't "soft skills" on the side of medicine. ✅️They are the medicine, working alongside every reagent and machine in that lab. From there, the technical world opened up: 🔬 We walked through the full diagnostic chain — CBC, RFTs, LFTs, serum electrolytes, mRDT, tumor marker immunoassays — each one telling a different part of a patient's story: diagnosis, prognosis, or screening. 🩸 We studied ABO and Rhesus blood grouping and cross-matching, and how donated blood is carefully stored and tracked before transfusion. 🧫 We observed blood staining techniques and got hands-on with detailed microscopy of cancer cells — turning slides we'd only seen in lecture notes into living, three-dimensional understanding. ⚙️ We saw specialized equipment in action — including the COBAS C 311 biochemistry analyzer and the hematology/blood bank's scientific refrigeration systems — each engineered for precision that patients' lives depend on. 💉 We learned the details of phlebotomy that rarely make it into a textbook: which vacutainer top to use for which test, exact blood volumes required, and the anticoagulants that keep each sample viable for accurate results. 🧬 Perhaps most strikingly, we learned how a patient's own blood can guide their specific treatment; how hormonal therapy, immunotherapy, and genetic profiling are increasingly tailored to the unique biology of each patient's cancer, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. Science and empathy, working the same shift. 🤍I'm walking away from this visit with a fuller picture of what oncology practice actually demands — not just technical precision, but the patience to sit with someone in their hardest moment and help them feel safe enough to keep fighting. Grateful to the UCI–Gulu team for their generosity in teaching us, and to my MBChB classmates for making this such a rich shared learning experience. #MedicalEducation #Oncology #Hematopathology #MedStudent #PatientCenteredCare #GlobalHealth @Foundercphs @mujuni_emmy @dokitasharon @DrOribaDan @rkalyes1 @faith_nabushawo

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Thank you Dr. HONORINE MUNEZERO 👏

Innovation in surgery isn't always a million-dollar robot. What does true medical innovation look like in a resource-constrained setting? It’s not just novel implants. It is training clinical officers, optimizing systems, and making the existing infrastructure work for everyone

You cannot fix global surgery with assumptions imported from high-income contexts. ✅️ We need local data about our patients, our roads, and our realities. Research must be led by the people living inside the systems. 📊 #GUSES #GlobalSurgery #Research

Textbooks don't teach you what to do when the power cuts out or the supplies run low. Surgical training in low-resource settings requires a totally different kind of courage. It requires adaptability that can only be modeled by those who have lived it. #GUSES #GlobalSurgery

At GUSES, we are committed to fostering early-career mentorship that builds resilient, systems-oriented future surgeons. Join us in redefining surgical leadership at Gulu University. #GUSES #GlobalSurgery #SurgicalMentorship #MedTwitter

This is where true mentorship steps in. A great mentor corrects the illusion of invincibility and replaces it with something far more powerful: honest, resilient competence. They teach you how to recover when things don't go according to the textbook.

True surgical confidence is not the absence of fear. 🛑 For decades, the "invincible surgeon" trope has done a disservice to medical trainees. It is time we talk about what honest competence actually looks like in the operating theatre. 👇🧵