Monday - First Day at the Hospital

Well Monday morning brought many different feelings. I was excited to finally get to the hospital and get to see the place in action, but I was also anxious and nervous about what we were going to see and if we were going to know where to go or who to talk. All that aside, 8:00 am came and we all piled into vans and headed to the hospitals. Right when we got there, our group had to be checked in through administration. We all had to pay a hospital fee to work there and then get a little piece of paper saying that we were supposed to be there working in case anyone questioned who we were. We had heard this process took a while, but it took a LONG WHILE. We got there about 8:30 and finally finished up the last of the paperwork around 11:00am. Once the paperwork was finished, we divided up in to smaller groups and dispersed throughout the different departments of the hospital. 

Part of the group before we all parted ways to our different locations

My little group went up to pediatrics. I thought the smells were bad the first night at orientation, but the pediatric unit brought on a whole new set of smells. The restrooms at the hospital don’t have toilets, they are just holes in the ground and there is no water or toilet paper and because patients who are ill use these restrooms, people frequently miss the hole….I’ll just let your imagination roll with that one. Then every now and then I would get a whiff of the tap water from the sinks. The water that isn’t purified here has a really weird smell and I could identify it at the hospital because our shower water at the compound smells the same. It smells kind of like fish with a hint of decaying body. Anyway, we introduced ourselves to the physicians on staff in the pediatric unit and he informed us that we had already missed the morning rotations since administration took so long so there wasn’t much else for us to do up there. He introduced us to the medical student interns that were working that day and they took us on a little tour of the pediatric unit. The “main unit” is just one big room separated by wooden half wall dividers. Beds and cribs line both sides of the wooden dividers and there are five sections. 

One of the cribs that lines the walls of the Pediatric Unit.

 The first two sections are for acute patients. The most common illnesses they treat children for there are malaria, meningitis, and pneumonia, all of which are life threatening if not treated. The last two sections of the main unit are for malnutrition patients only. Down the hall a ways is another pediatric room that houses patients with strictly vomiting and diarrheal disease. Across the hall from that room is another room for neonates that mostly treats premature babies and jaundice cases. All in all the first day was pretty disappointing since we missed the exciting part of morning rounds, but soon enough it was 1:00 pm and we headed out for lunch with the rest of the group. We went to this little café in the market called Caribou and I ordered a cheeseburger and French fries. It was delicious and a nice “taste of home!” We headed back to the compound to relax a while and a few of us decided to go back to the hospital that evening with Mia and Joel who have both been here a while already and know how the hospital works. We went back around 6:30pm and went to Minor Theatre, which is like an American ER. They do stitches, dress wounds, and small procedures. 

One of only two rooms in Minor Theatre

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much excitement in Minor while we were there, but in the end the night turned out to be an excellent learning experience. Mia and Joel showed us around the rooms and explained some procedures that happen in there. While we were bored in minor, many of us had never started in IV, so we practiced inserting IV cannulas into each other’s hands. It was a good learning experience since doctors around here just ask us to do it when they are busy with other things. 

Practicing IVs (take note that is a rubber glove being used as a tourniquet because the hospital has no real ones)

Just before we left, we popped our head into casualty where a man had just come in with a collapsed lung and many scrapes and wounds to his head. They were taking him off to X-ray and Mia explained that it looked like “mob justice.” All of us questioned what that was since its not something that we encounter in the United States often. For lack of a better definition, “Mob Justice” is a legal act of beating the crap out of someone for stealing or cheating. It happens often here and is easily recognized by many blunt force trauma wounds to the head. They generally write “mob justice” on the medical admission booklet so that the doctors know what kind of wounds to look for. It was already late and we had been at the hospital for quite a while so we didn’t stick around any longer. We headed back to the compound for a good night's rest.