Hospital Visits

Hi! I'm Ciara one of the nursing student. Today we went to visit local hospitals/clinics as well as a local nursing school. The first hospital was a Cuban hospital. This was interesting because there was Cuban nurses who only spoke Spanish and Haitian nurses that only spoke Creole. The facility was built in July 2012 so it is very new and nice. On Monday's and Friday's they hold a vaccination clinic, therefore it was very busy with babies and children getting their vaccinations. Their supply didn't contain all of the vaccines, but some like Hep B, Typhoid, Polio. No MMR right now. We noticed the nurses re-using the same needle for all vaccines. This seems to be due to a supply problem. The hospital is 100% free for all people. This makes it difficult to sustain supplies. During our tour it was mentioned that patients will come from all over, including Port au Prince because of it being free and providing a variety of services. They have a ER/triage area, OR, physical therapy, OBGYN, and HIV testing area. Again, very nice.

We also got to visit St. Michelle hospital in Jacmel. They are in the process of rebuilding many buildings. We met a Haitian nurse that Barb and Dr. Rick know well. She is very kind and offered for 3 of us to observe a surgery tomorrow and 3 on Wednesday. This hospital is much larger than the Cuban hospital. The area I was most interested in during the tour was the pediatrics area. It was interesting because it contained almost entirely premie babies, rather than a variety of pediatric cases. There was at least 10 premies. Their resources are so limited that the premies are swaddled, but they don't have heat lamps, bili lights, etc. They are placed in nets and bundled up. I would be curious to know the survival rate of this population.

The last stop was to the local nursing school. We found out they have 250 nurses between the 4 class years. This means the classes are pretty big. The first class we introduced ourselves. I told them my name and all the girls laughed because of Ciara the singer. I've gotten that quite a few times since we've been here. The school is big, but classrooms pretty crammed tight. They all wear uniforms and are in different colors based on year in school. Then we got to visit the lab this morning (new day I'm finishing post). The lab is very very nice. They have so much equipment, beds, wheel chairs, bed pans, etc. to practice with. I actually feel like their lab has more resources then the actual hospitals.

Well goodbye for now, I'm sure one will blog after surgery today to tell about their expire need. -Ciara