Learning better skills!

Hi everybody! Hope you're doing well. I'm totally recovered now and have been back in the swing of life here. Unfortunately, one of the pediatricians here (one of four) went into premature labor this week which has put a lot of strain on the others. It's amazing that God knew many months ago that our help would be needed at this exact time even more Than usual. I have been running the rounds on the wards and Bryan has been running things in the nursery. This frees up the staff to run around seeing the most critical patients and attend their other administrative responsibilities. 

It's neat how no matter where you are in the learning process, you can learn from your teammates. I am in charge of a team of a medical officer intern (just finished medical school, no residency but to do residency here is rare after you complete the general internship). We also have a clinical officer (like a NP basically) and a clinical officer intern. Because there are so many children here with hydrocephalus (I speculate one reason is untreated neonatal meningitis) and because kids are generally pretty sick when they come to the hospital , they folks on my team do lumbar punctures all the time! And they are really good at it! They do it differently here than we do in the states, and here if you don't get what we call a "champagne tap" (no red blood cells get into the spinal fluid) people look at you funny and think you must be really new. The technique they use here is that try sit the baby up instead of laying him down, and they use a one inch 23 gauge needle. So yesterday I had them let me do it their way, and what do you know if it wasn't a champagne tap! I think I will be changing my method! 

Last night, we had several of the MO interns and one of the pediatric MOs over for dinner. We had a great time learning about how thy came to practice medicine and hearing about their lives. We laughed a lot about different stories we all had from taking call, and there were serious moments too when we talked about our faith and how it motivates us. It was a great little party!

Today we are rounding early so our teams can get out and enjoy the weekend. Rounds on Saturdays are quick and on Sundays no one gets seen except the sickest patients by the attending on call. That's definitely different than what we are accustomed to! 

We love hearing from you guys so please feel free to send emails and updates on how things are going stateside. 

Sb