Did Mother Teresa ever received medical training?

Answer 1

A:

Mother Teresa began her career as a teacher, and had no medical qualifications or training. In fact one of her failings is that she simply did not understand how to provide basic health care. She created hospices that allowed poor people to die with dignity, but often with unnecessary suffering, believing it to be God's will that they suffer. Many of her patients could have been cured with basic medical care and low cost medications, allowing them to return to their families. Collete Livermore, a former nun in Mother Teresa's order, The Missionaries of Charity, said that the order had sufficient money donated to it to buy books to help with the medical work but this was not done and as a result, the health even of the sisters themselves was at risk. A great many of Mother Teresa's patients were Hindus, and her greatest wish was that they be baptised as Christians before dying.

Answer 2

A:No. In fact, after she took her vows as a Catholic nun, she was assigned to teach at Saint Mary's High School for Girls, Calcutta.

Regardless of her many virtues, Mother Teresa appears to have lacked even a basic understanding of proper medical practice. The Lancet and the British Medical Journal criticised the reuse of hypodermic needles, poor living conditions, including the use of cold baths for all patients, and an approach to illness and suffering that precluded the use of many elements of modern medical care, such as systematic diagnosis. Dr. Robin Fox, editor of The Lancet, says that the role of a hospice is to minimise suffering with professional medical care and attention to expressed needs and wishes of the patient, but Mother Teresa's approach does not.

Answer 3

Mother Teresa received little medical training. She did spent a few months in Patna to receive a basic medical training in the Holy Family Hospital and then ventured out into the slums. Initially, Mother Teresa only operated hospices for the dying which, as she herself said, were not medical care facilities.

Answer 4

She spent several months learning basic medical care at the Holy Family Hospital in Patna, India.