Back to class

Back to class today, Just as any other day there were a ton of people waiting for the lottery to be seen in the hospital today. Christina and I got a full tour of the hospital from the ER director. Hope Hospital is funded by three non-profit groups, located in the USA, Singapore and Japan. Their mission and goal is to deliver the highest quality of care they can with the resources they have, without sacrificing for the number of patients they see. This means they turn away over 200 people per day. When a patient arrives they are triaged and the acute patients are seen if there is room. . The non acute patient are directed to the lottery out of the over 200 patients that apply for the lottery each day only 10 are selected to become new patients They have a 10 bed ER, two surgery suits, one portable X-ray. In the near future the will have an ultrasound. They have what appears to be a good lab, a pathology lab that’s funded by a German doctor (the slides are E-mailed to him and he gives the results from Germany). No catscan, no MRI, no endoscope and what I found most surprising no ventilator. When we asked what they were in need of most the ventilator was the top answer, apparently during surgery the patient has to be manually bagged. They say they can bag someone up to eight hours, but no longer, so if a patient needs more than that they die. The medical ward is an 11 bed room with very sick patients. In order to be admitted you need to have at least 4 or more IV injections per day and most of the care is provided by family members. The med surg. Unit is also a 11 bed room with family members in attendance. They have doctors from all over the world that will spend a week volunteering a few hours a day to help with the high patient count. They do 600,000 lab test per year, do 250,000 x-rays a year and see 300 patients per day. All in all it appeared they do a really good job with the limited resources available.

We covered childbirth today, no one in class has ever seen a birth, in this society men are not allowed to attend births. We had a lot of fidgeting during this class and the most questions yet.

We also ordered patches and T-shirts with the new logo that we helped with (thanks Rebecca) today, if anyone wants one let me know quickly.
It’s still hot and the word is that this, is the cool season. In the next few weeks it will start to heat up. Glad I’ll be back in the cool rain by then
Andy