Well, its been a busy, busy day. We started our
morning at 7am setting up the
operating rooms, recovery room and clinic. When we arrived there must
have been 500 people waiting…no exaggeration. About 200 were stragglers
in from elsewhere in the hospital that had to be weeded out immediately. The others were triaged and categorized by
diagnosis and then seen by our surgeons, anesthesiologists and pediatrician
before finally getting the okey dokey for surgery. Our coordinator-translators
were wonderful. We were a little rough going for the first five patients,
but after that the whole clinic ran smoothly. We saw 134 patients and
scheduled 66 of them. We will have a busy two weeks ahead.
Everyone worked well together. While my head nurse,
Carreen, was setting up our operating room with two beds in one room, I was
busy in clinic doing hemoglobin testing and photos for the chart. Then it
was my job as team leader to arrange food, water, narcotics and other drugs,
pharmacy items, distilled water for the autoclave and about 50 other tasks to
make the preparations for tomorrows start. I’m tired tonight...but not too
tired to go out and eat and have a few cervezas...not on call tonight!!!
Hi Beth, Tried bringing your name up on facebook and this is where I landed. I've often wondered in the past 10 years what you were up to, but never imagined this...kind of thought you might be a traveleing nurse, but when you travel, you reeeallly travel. Best wishes to you. If you have the time and/or inclination, I'd love to hear from you. Aloha, Pat Todd
Posted by: patricia todd | August 21, 2009 at 11:01 AM