Thursday, May 30, 2013

Work in the basement

So it is high time I get a blog post up. I have been debating about what to write those of you wanting stories from the hospital it’s the same as last time. My ventilators don’t always work, patients are very sick, and I am enjoying being part of the team here.
Today I have been having a new adventure. Tenwek being a mission hospital gets many things donated. These things all end up on the shelves in Central Supply, much of the donated equipment is used and put to good use however among every container of donated supplies is the junk. Things are donated because they are no longer needed by the place that donated them. Maybe it was a mistaken purchase so its fine for us to use or it is something completely random that would never be used – ever. When I was here two years ago I spent some time in Central Supply familiarizing myself with the items on the “respiratory shelves” which is a lot of equipment from little connectors to 40 feet of oxygen tubing.  Amoung these shelves I also find the obscure like hoods – no clue what these hoods are for – I think maybe the OR. Although now that I am writing this I should double check and see if they’re oxyhoods. Anyway I was asked today to assist the staff in going through these shelves. It is tedious dusty work but I am enjoying it. We emptied one whole shelf today. I found some treasures: in-line suction catheters and incentive spirometers, and sent some things to the trash: water traps are useless when your humidification is HME. I also have matched up some supplies to other areas of the hospital such as double lumen endo tubes to the thoracic surgeon, he did not know we had them – we have 38.
I will probably end up spending a week down there taking breaks to see my patients and respond to pages. Today breaks involved doing CPR, chest physiotherapy and some ventilator checks, as well as a few e-mails to Europe as someone there has some equipment he wants to donate and wants to be sure its appropriate, I am so thankful he asks.
I will end with a few pics of my work. 
I head to work around 7am and caught this beautiful sunrise out my front door.

We have been having trouble with the power to our CT scan, so we now have all these batteries to  hopefully fix it.

This is currently behind the hospital, not sure why?

Today I emptied the shelf on the left tomorrow the right, then the next one. 

1 comment:

  1. i'm so thankful you are there! say hi to my friends David and Kimberly Bailey who are serving there, if you see them around.

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