Back From Haiti

It was quite a week of sweat, hard work, adventure, sweat, camaraderie, sweat, innovation and medicine. I said in my first blog how I was interested in learning and practicing medicine that was low technology and back to the basics. Well, I got my wish in spades.

My first day I had 20 minutes of training and then I was on my own. There were approximately 110 patients in the hospital and in the general medicine tent I was suddenly responsible for about 25 of them. I quickly figured out that if I wanted to do something that is usually a quick job in the US -such as grabbing a glucometer to check a diabetics blood sugar that it was not so easy. Typically the equipment needed was not available or no one knew where it was in the mass of people and chaos. I had to just figure it out. Innovation, intuition and basic training was the key to treating the patients.

A person with swollen legs, crackly lungs, an altered level of consciousness, labored breathing would be diagnosed as probable congestive heart failure and treated as such. We did not have an X-ray, or EKG for diagnosis and for 2 days we did not have a lab for blood analysis. If the treatment was effective then we continued it. If a patient needed to be propped up in a sitting position we made a wedge under the mattress with cardboard and tape.

Another thing that really struck me was the important need for people with all types of skills. We could not have done it without the PT's who got people moving again, and the pharmacists who sorted the mountains of donated medications and knew what to substitute when an ordered med was unavailable. The Lab people were back to microscopes and pipetting with reagents, no million dollar blood analysis devices.

We really needed non-medical staff who found or organized equipment, fixed broken cots, found donated coffee makers (important) and more.

The patients were physically tough, enduring major injuries without complaint and minimal care or pain medications. We did what we could and it was worthwhile week of hard work, sweat, giving, sweat, new friendships, sweat and helping the Haitian people recover.

Bob Parker, RN