Nkoaranga is a Lutheran hospital, so Monday morning Mikkel
and I went to church. As with the church visit last month, we introduced
ourselves in Swahili and talked about our purpose for being at the hospital in addition
to much singing in Swahili for the short time we were there. Afterwards, we went to the “Morning Report”
in which the head doctor, Dr. Samuel, went over the new patients in each ward
as well as the planned treatments for each of them. It reminded me of the case studies shown in
the Radiology department at Duke Hospital since the other doctors in the
hospital all got to weigh in on the diagnosis and treatment being delivered to
the patients. Some of the younger
doctors asked questions about the treatments given and pointed to “National
Guidelines” apparently established in Tanzania and posted online as a source
for treatment regimens. After this
meeting, I continued to work on the inventory and meet hospital staff. I fixed a couple of stethoscopes with missing
earpieces for the pharmacy and the maternity ward by shaping rubber tubing with
a box cutter. I also worked on the
personal computers for Jeremiah and Neema as well as some of the other hospital
staff including the pharmacy computer. Perhaps
most importantly, Mikkel and I figured out the Wifi password for the hospital
so we will have communication with our coordinator, other students, friends and
family, and access to equipment manuals online.
The Wifi is very slow but will be enough for our purposes. UPDATE: The hospital wifi went out on Tuesday afternoon since the hospital did not pay for the service so now we are without Wifi.
Tuesday, Mikkel and I nearly completed the inventory, found
some closets with old hospital equipment which will be useful for fixes, and
toured the surgical ward to take inventory.
Surgery has a ton of equipment, both working and non-working. The surgeon Dr. Emmanuel really wants his
ultrasound machine working again so Mikkel and I are going to take a look at it
sometime in the next few days and hopefully find a fix. Seeing the closets of old equipment was also
an interesting experience. Alongside the
old equipment which had clearly not been used in a long time was boxes of
completely new and unopened supplies and sometimes medical devices. Mikkel and I found three completely new steam
sterilizers (essentially autoclaves that don’t use electricity but an open fire
to increase pressure/heat) in one of the closets hidden behind some boxes of
other equipment. There were also new
mosquito nets, surgical gauze, needles, and many other supplies which did not
look like they had been touched or would be found anytime soon. Seeing these stockpiles of untarnished
equipment made me appreciate how important it will be to integrate any repair work
that I do into the hospital structure and the routines of the staff. It is far too easy for donated equipment and
supplies to find their way into a closet never to be seen again (despite the
potential usefulness of them), and I will try to be aware of this as I work on the
medical devices here and make as appreciable of an impact as possible during my
short time here. Tuesday, I also got my
first big piece of equipment – a broken autoclave from Maternity Ward. Both of
their autoclaves are not working so I hope to fix quickly so they are able to sterilize
their supplies again. I’ll update soon
on the progress!
Mikkel and I also began working on a puzzle since moving to
Nkoaranga. I thought it would be fun to
post updates from the puzzle over the next few blog posts, but Mikkel and I
both have determined, focused personalities and a penchant for puzzle-making so
we ended up finishing in just 2 days. I’ve posted the pictures from the project
below – Enjoy!
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| Mikkel with the autoclave from Maternity |
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