Many Hands Make Light Work

At World Pediatric Project, there are two main areas of focus. There are International Teams, and U.S. Referrals. The International Teams department is in charge of organizing mission trips to countries throughout South America. This team is responsible for locating where different teams are needed, what type of team is needed (cardiac, eye, orthopedic, etc.), when the teams should travel, and who they will see once they are there. In addition, this department keeps track of the children once they are seen by a team so that follow-ups can occur. The second team is the U.S. Referrals team. This team is responsible for organizing the children who need to come to the United States for surgery. The U.S. Referrals team is responsible for setting up doctors appointments, transporting families to and from their appointments, providing housing and food for the families, and organizing social activities for the families. This is the department that I work with. Every two weeks the teams get together and update the other so that each team is aware of what the organization is accomplishing as a whole.

Employees at WPP are directed through standard procedures. Each team has a google outlook calendar that has all the appointments, meetings, patient schedules, and tasks that are then individually distributed based on job specification. For example, in the U.S. Referrals department, one person manages all the medical records, appointments and communications with the doctors, while someone else manages the social outings and volunteer schedule. So while both people are working towards the same goal of the child’s experience in the U.S., they are contributing different things based on their specificity. By dividing and conquering, it makes a lot of work a lot more doable!

Because there are so many different people who have such different areas of expertise contributing to the functioning of WPP, often times the decisions are made within the department they occur. With that being said, if there is a decision that involves both departments, then both departments will weigh in on the decision. For example, if a child is getting surgery in their home country they would be working with the International Teams department. However, say that it is then determined that child needs to come to the US for surgery. At that point, the U.S. Referrals team would join the discussion on the decisions made for that child. Again, in this case many hands make the work a lot more manageable, and the decisions a lot more thought through.