This past week has flown by! Actually what am I saying.. this past month has flown by!! I can't believe that we just finished our last day in the OR as the first (of hopefully many!) Mercer PA students coming to do an international rotation.
I'm proud to report that Meg and I stepped up to the plate for Mercer and gave it our all these past two weeks in the OR. We were up for anything, always wanting to learn more, offering our assistance in any capacity, and then also being very respectful of all of the OR surgeons, staff, and other students.
We made friends to last us a lifetime and saying goodbye has been a two day struggle. The staff rotates one day on/one day off and so we had to say goodbye to one crew yesterday and do it all again today!!
The surgeons have been amazing. They let us scrub in, explain what's going on in English (which is their third language!!), and allow us to learn hands on. They are patient with our suturing skills and even took an afternoon to teach us surgical knot tying and blood transfusion formulas.
The nurse anesthetists have embraced us whole heartedly and were great at getting us involved. They taught us all of the (limited) medications they use and let us draw them up and administer. This week they also got us involved with intubation and epidurals. Both of us got great practice at doing these skills, which is rare to come across in the US. I don't think they quite understood there's a whole separate program for anesthesia assistants but we didn't want to burst the bubble!
The OR staff and rotating nurses were fabulous as well! They accommodated for us being there, helped us maintain sterility and find supplies, and didn't mind us goofing off and taking pictures and videos while in the OR.
And lastly the time spent with other students has been one of a kind. Elise, Ingrid, and Kamillanwere are the 3 Norwegian nursing students who were helping in the OR for the past two weeks. Lova (pronounced Luff aka "Ruth") is the Malagasy 4th year medicinal students on rotations at the hospital. She has been so kind to allow us to get in on the rotation for scrubbing in and then also helping us translate. We have been able to learn from her as well as teach her some medical knowledge we have already learned along the way.
This rotation covered all the bases for global medicine. We spent a week in the field doing hands on clinical medicine with limited supplies and a huge language barrier thanks to Scarlet and Medical Mission Teams.
And then we spent two weeks in the OR seeing everything from General surgery to speciality procedures to emergency medicine thanks to Dr Harison and the Antsirabe Lutheran Hospital. We saw/assisted with...
- GenSurg: open chole, lots of hernias, abscess debridement, and even acute septic abdomen
- Ortho: arm/leg fx, osteomyelitis, and amputation
- OBGYN: c-sections, D&C, ovarian cysts, and several hysterectomies
- Urology: urethral strictures and prostectomies
- ENT/Thyroid: GOITERS!! And a tonsillectomy. The cataract surgery for our clinic patient is scheduled for Monday after we leave.
- Emergency: lacerations, I&D, and chest tube for a pleural effusion
And it wouldn't be a true international rotation in Madagascar if we didn't lose power and run out of anesthesia supplies on the last day... the surgeries today were done using either local anesthesia or an epidural. And then during the last few cases the skies opened and it began to pour and about an hour later, the city lost power. The generator is unfortunately still broken despite several attempts to fix it and a new one costs $9000 so they will make do with candles and flashlights until it can be repaired.
We have learned so much in our short time here and I'm forever grateful for all of the Mercer faculty and staff who put their faith and trust in us. Thank you to the one and only Dr JillRae Mattingly who traveled across the world with us to serve others and gave us the confidence to continue on after she went home. Thank you to Scarlet Holcomb who stayed behind for two additional weeks without her hubby to ensure our safety and help make this potential clinical site a reality. And THANK YOU to Dr Harison, Domoina, and Midera for taking us under their wings, hosting us so graciously and making this month abroad feel like home. It truly took an army to make our dream of an international rotation site a reality and I couldn't be more thankful to be given the opportunity to come here and be part of Mercer's future!
Tomorrow we head to Johannesburg for a 27hr layover and then onto Atlanta on Sunday night. We will be back stateside on Monday so wish us safe travels as we journey back west this weekend!
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