The following is a four-part plan generated to increase patient care through neurosurgical education in the developing world. We aim to increase the services which FIENS can supply to our global health neurosurgical training sites to maximize efficiency of education and allow the opportunity to revolutionize training and patient care in the countries of our developmental sites. These programs are to focus major fundraising to allow individual and directed donation to programs as well as assure the viability and educational quality of the FIENS training of sites in the developing world.

1. Electronic education and web-based linking
of dyad sites

The primary principle of FIENS is to establish and sustain neurosurgical training programs in the developing world. To do this we must have a strategy which emphasizes continuity of education. Our program has identified one strategy; that of developing dyads between training programs in the developed world with our training sites in the developing world...

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FIENS is proud to announce the initiation of the Bassett FIENS Foundation Scholarship. Named in honor of community board member Mr. Dick Bassett, this scholarship will enable neurosurgeons from FIENS-sponsored programs in developing countries to travel to neurosurgery training programs in North America for a period of 3 months. Costs for airline flights, housing, food, and living expenses will be provided. Future scholarship recipients may also be senior neurosurgery residents who will use scholarship funds to travel to FIENS-sponsored training programs in developing countries.

Mr. Bassett joined FIENS as a community board member in 2014. In December, 2014 he participated in a neurosurgery mission led by Dr. David Sandberg, Secretary of FIENS, to provide neurosurgery care to children in Haiti with hydrocephalus. In the enclosed photos, Mr. Bassett is shown assisting with patients in the clinic and outside the operating rooms with Dr. Sandberg. Dr. Sandberg recalls, "Mr. Bassett was an amazing addition to our team. He came with a suitcase full of teddy bears for the pediatric patients, most of whom have no toys of their own. There was no task too small for him. He worked all day cleaning surgical instruments and scrubbing the operating room floors clean in between surgical cases. His compassion and enthusiasm inspired and lifted up our whole team."