Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Bud and Ray, with a bit of help from Andy and Larry “the shorter,” managed to get wiring run from the backup generator to the new operating theater and get outlets installed. Along the way they also got asked to look at a number of pieces of equipment around the hospital that weren’t working or weren’t working properly. They fixed an otoscope, fixed (again) the suction pump for surgery, the oxygen concentrator and a cautery machine, determined why a warming bed for infants hasn’t been working (they had several babies die in the past year because they couldn’t get them warmed up sufficiently) and then figured out how to make it work, and a variety of other problems.

Andy worked again with a couple of the hospital staff teaching them how to use Excel to build spreadsheets for inventory and other forms.

The two Larry’s worked on preparing the holes we dug Friday and Monday for the perc test. This involved filling the holes to a dept h of 12” with water and then maintaining it at 12” for a four hour period. Not hard work by any means, but it required sitting/standing out in the open field under the Zambian sun (95 degrees) for most of the four hours. We split it up in shifts. I worked with Daniel who is in charge of the lab to draw a sample of tap water for testing and then set up the filter system we brought with us. We got the filter working and then gathered a water sample from it as well. We put the samples from both in the incubator to ‘cook’ for the 24 hours required.

The medical team continued seeing patients and doing procedures. Late in the evening, they got called out to do a D & C. Dr. Kari has been working with Dr. Dan (a family practice physician) to become comfortable doing these so he can do them on his own after we leave. This was the third D & C they did together since we arrived and Dr. Dan handled it well and seemed comfortable. This was a major goal for Dr. Kari.

She and Dr. Dan had hoped to do the same sort of mentoring with C-sections also but oddly there haven’t been any cases to work on together. Fortunately, Mr. Siabowa (one of the clinical officers) worked with Dr. Kari in February to become proficient at hysterectomies (which may need to be done in an emergency) and has been doing them since then. Once we leave, Dr. Dan and Mr. Siabowa should be able to work together to help Dr. Dan get comfortable with C-sections as well.

Barbara (nurse anesthetist) was able to spend time with Wedon, a clinical officer with special training in anesthesia. Barbara has been very excited to have someone with a shared background to work with and learn more about how things are typically done here and whom she can mentor when appropriate.