"Just south of paradise, just north of frustation."1
From an American perspective, practicing medicine in Grenada is like practicing medicine on another planet. The heat slows thought processes as well as physical activity. Antiquated buildings with worn floors seem unhygienic. Unoccupied hospital beds have no sheets, and cardiac monitors, ventilators, and televisions are nonexistent. Everything except time seems in short supply.
Recently, I had the opportunity to spend 1 month practicing as a physician and pathologist with Project HOPE in St George's, Grenada. Project HOPE, an independent nonprofit corporation that began operations in 1958, is popularly associated with the world's first peacetime hospital ship.2 The shipboard delivery of medicine is no longer part of its program, but Project HOPE now has health personnel in many developing countries and in the United States. Project HOPE has been in Grenada since 1983, when the US Army invaded the capital during