Day 2: getting to know the hospital and people

Day 2:
I decided to immediately dive-in to get to know the system. Luckily, I did not suffer much significant jet lag. I was also fortunate to have a fellow internal medicine resident, also from California, to work with me for the 4 out of the 5.5 weeks that I will be in the country. Though the hospital was relatively big, I quickly found my way around places and soon met most all the attendings, resident, interns, medical students, and administrators.

The day started with morning report, where the post-call intern and PA gave a brief report of the overnight events, including deaths and new admissions. Then the 3rd year student presented the full H+P and impressions---or essentially the problem list. Thereafter there was the monthly grandrounds. The topic of that day was by the opthalmology dept on ectropion and entropion.

In the afternoon, one of my colleague's patient died of septic shock from an incarcerated umbilical hernia. Surgery wouldn't take her to the OR beforehand because of her massive ascites. Overall, it sounded like all parties were limited to do much more for her.

The hospital tour: JFKMC is a good-sized hospital w/ 4 floors (out-patient dept, Med, Peds, Surgery, Ob-Gyn/OR/L+D), though not all areas are completely renovated and operational yet. OPD (out patient dept) is huge with separate areas for pediatrics, ob-gyn, surgery, and medicine. I heard from someone that 1000 patients are seen daily. There is also a surgery/trauma and medicine/peds emergency room.

The hospital was established in 1968 and was the country's largest referral center up until the time of the civil war that took place between 1989 to 2003. The conflict took much toll on the hospital and now it's still in recovery mode. It is still the major referral hospital for most of the local clinic and smaller hospitals in-town and up-country. There are maybe at least 10 other public/private hospitals in town?

Finally in the evening, I got to meet the rest of the HEARTT (http://www.heartt.net/) volunteers and learned to play a scrabble-related game called Banangram. Currently, I'm with 1 med resident, 1 peds attending, and 1 ER resident. They are really a great bunch, and I already like them a lot. Earlier in the month, there were also some ID attendings visiting. I heard that next month there will be a few more ER and pediatrics residents coming. This is exciting because I got the impression that not many people rotated through this place, but apparently HEARTT has volunteers from many other places in the US besides the J+J scholars program.