Saturday 26 Sunday 27 November 2011




This weekend we had a visit from Pauline Penney who is a Kiwi living in Port au Prince and working for the UN. We had the opportunity to discuss our physiotherapy project with her and her input was very helpful indeed. We showed her around Cap Haitien and she really enjoyed her time away from Port au Prince.

It rained a lot on Sunday and the temperature was nice and cool which meant I had a great sleep and for the first time didn’t require the fan. Don’t forget it is wintertime here and temperatures drop to around 23 degrees at the most.



Monday 28 November 2011

 
The day at the hospital started with the final presentations by the interns who are leaving the department in the next couple of days. The presentations went from 7.00 to 11.00 and were followed by morning tea consisting of sandwiches, cup cakes and soft drinks preceded by speeches. It was a nice touch by the interns thanking everybody for the teaching they received over the last 4 to 6 weeks .

The patients attending the clinic had to wait patiently outside and once the party was over the clinic started with a hiss and a roar and finished at 1.30. We saw a closed fractured tibia which was put into a long leg plaster and sent on his way followed by a young man with a dislocated elbow. The resident gave him some diazepam IV and reduced the dislocation on the spot. After application of a back slab he also was sent on his way. There were lots of other smaller injuries and towards the end of the clinic a young woman was brought in who had been injured in the Dominican Republic 3 months prior. She suffered a segmental fracture of the tibia and a complex distal humeral fracture with intra articular extension. Both fractures were treated in a plaster after closed reduction and she was sent back to Haiti. She has a very stiff and deformed elbow which is beyond salvage and a clinically united tibial fracture with some external rotation and shortening. The resident told me that Haitien are treated very badly in the Dominican Republic and that they are treated like animals rather than human beings. I must say that after the cases I have seen recently he is probably right.



Today was also the initiation day for the new intake of nurses called ‘jour des bleus’. This is when the new recruits dress up in funny clothes with multi coloured bows in their hair, brightly coloured socks and a pair of footwear which doesn’t match. They looked really funny to the great delight of the interns and residents.