Today was a rather frustrating day.
After fare welling Steve and Lorraine, who returned to the
UK, I went to the hospital expecting a full day operating list. We started with
a patient who had a neglected anterior shoulder dislocation and after that we
were told they had run out of sterile gowns and that was the end of surgery for
the day.
I went to the ward to have a look at the patients from last
Tuesday’s list and they were doing well except the lady with the
hemiarthroplasty who categorically refused to mobilise. After that I helped Dr
Cherubin apply a hip spica on the ward in a 6 year old boy with a femur
fracture. This was a half spica and the child was resting ‘delicately’on an
instrument box with another square box supporting one of his buttocks (see
photo attached). Well the little boy wasn’t very happy but in the end he had
some sort of plaster immobilisation of his fracture.
I then spent most of the morning in outpatients where a
trained nurse was running a clubfoot clinic. This is a new initiative since I
visited last and financed by CBM and Prosthetics International. The good thing
is that patients do not pay so the attendance is excellent. The nurse had been
trained at a Ponseti Course in Port au Prince and was doing a very good job
applying Ponseti plasters. She was very skilled and even taught the registrars
the Ponseti technique. That was really the only positive aspect of my day.
The rest of the day was spent teaching the registrars
clinical examination and talking about Haitian politics.
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