Denver physician’s assistant providing medical care in Ukraine

Doug Amis never knows if he’s going to spend the day in a building, a tent or a makeshift clinic.

The physician’s assistant from Denver has been in Ukraine for two weeks with the Kansas-based nonprofit Global Care Force to provide medical treatment to people living in war-torn cities.

“We’ve set up locations in churches and schools. Today we were actually in a medical clinic, which I was very happy about. I mean, I was in a closet in a medical clinic, but you have to work with what you got,” Amis said in a Zoom interview while stationed in Odesa. “I’ve been on medical mission trips where it’s a tent, or even just sheets hung up on the beach.”

Medical teams made up of two doctors and three nurses will spend a month in Ukraine, using two mobile clinic vans to visit eight different communities.

“In the first six weeks of Russia in Ukraine, we began to recognize that the doctors in smaller communities were being reassigned to active combat zones,” said Scott Oberkrom, the CEO of Global Care Force. “The residents of the communities who were not able to relocate or flee from Ukraine are left without health care. So we developed the model of mobile clinics with in-country partners.”

Amis and his team have helped to provide medical attention to people who have chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes, while also treating people with severe physical injuries.

He helped a group of people who were hiding in a basement for 40 days. They were 60- to 70-year-olds with different chronic illnesses who weren’t getting their necessary medicine. They also developed high blood pressure and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We try to do the best we can with the resources available. With the lack of medical infrastructure here in Ukraine, hospitals are working with pretty much less than a skeleton crew,” Amis said. “Now of course there’s such a significant need.”

To avoid being captured, another man lay in a ditch for three days with shrapnel in his foot. He managed to find a small village and hide in a basement with other villagers. Amis and his group were able to help treat his injury and find him an actual hospital. Since then, they’ve continued to monitor and care for his foot.

Amis has been in the medical industry since 1987 when he was in the Navy. He worked as an EMT, and a paramedic, performed surgeries and became a physician’s assistant. After taking some leave from the medical world to be a chemist, Amis returned to receive his PA certificate from Red Rocks Community College in Lakewood and his master of medical science at St. Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania.

Amis has been working with Global Care Force — formerly called COVID Care Force — since 2020, when the organization went to the Navajo Nation during the pandemic. Dr. Gary Morsch founded the organization at the beginning of the pandemic.

“Dr. Morsch said, ‘How can I help? Where are the gaps? Where can our volunteers go?’ And with his decades of health care experience and outreach, he gravitated towards connecting health care professionals with communities that are in need.” Oberkrom said.

Global Care Force is accepting donations of medical supplies, money and volunteers. Donations can go to directly sponsor a volunteer or the organization overall.

“These Ukrainians have been some of the most amazing and appreciative people,” Amis said. “Some of the most resilient people I’ve ever met.”

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