Day 9: Busy, busy, busy

There is so much to write about today, I hardly know where to start.  We only spent 4 hours at the hospital today but in those four hours we: met with el Jefe control de Propiedad, had a meeting with Dr. Mejia, recorded all equipment in the ICU, critical care observation rooms, and hemodialysis room, arranged to have Huy follow a respiratory therapist for a couple hours, and got to look at more equipment that we received today from the ER.

            El Jefe Control de Propiedad, Carlos Pineda, is the man in charge of the current organizational equipment system. On every piece of equipment we’ve looked at it’s been clear that a numbering system exists but it’s been extremely difficult to understand how these numbers are selected or whether they belong to a larger system. All we really knew was that we wanted to get started on creating an organizational database of all equipment and parts in the hospital. Sr. Pineda explained that every floor has one binder with all equipment, the number his department assigns to each machine, and it’s general condition. He was enthusiastic about us working to add to his system and, with his information and blessing we made arrangements to start taking inventory of the hospital.

            This database could be helpful to us in a wide variety of ways. It would be helpful to all medical professionals in the hospital to locate equipment and parts, for maintenance staff, for the future ordering of equipment, and to ensure that our work is sustainable. The idea is to have staff update the database with details about the condition of each piece of equipment, what problems they are having with it and where they move it after labeling it as broken and useless. If this database is created and updated regularly we will be able to ensure we are training on the correct equipment and staying up to date on the state of equipment, which is particularly important at Roosevelt where things are malfunctioning and breaking daily.

            Shortly after our meeting with Sr. Pineda ended, Kelsey and I went to talk to Dr. Mejia about our progress, plans for the week and our hopes for our connection with UVG and how he would like to proceed to secure the relationship. We would really like to set things in motion while in Guatemala and, after the meeting I became confident we could make the connection between UVG and Roosevelt a reality. Mejia also acknowledged some of the difficulties we’ve been having with equipment repair. He believes some of the equipment that is hospital owned is being sabotaged. We have seen a lot of equipment that has parts missing that then prevents us from repairing the machine entirely. He believes it may be possible for people to be harming this equipment intentionally in order to financially benefit companies that rent equipment to the hospital. This was something we had not even considered, but definitely gave us something to think about.

            While we were standing in Dr. Mejia’s office a doctor from the ER stopped by with two broken ECG’s. He accompanied us down to our workspace telling us that there are 3 other ECG’s in the ER out of commission that he’d like us to look at later this week. We only have 3 days left and there is still equipment coming in from all parts of the hospital, it is clear our work is far from over and the hospital could use all the help it can get.

            Speaking of extra volunteers, as we were recording information for the equipment database, a women dressed in green scrubs approached us. She told us she had seen Kelsey and I in the hemodialysis room and bluntly asked, “So, are you gonna help?”. This woman was the first volunteer I have ever seen in Roosevelt and was clearly passionate about the hospital. She spoke impeccable English and clearly communicated to us exactly what she thought the hospital needed. She, herself, had fundraising goals to paint the walls and refurnish the floors. It was great to see someone who was so passionate about helping the hospital who was not working there.  I would love to see other community members get involved, or at least visit Roosevelt- we’ve agreed that it’s hard to come to Roosevelt without feeling a need to get involved.

Taking inventory

We had lunch with the UVG Mechatronics association after our busy morning at the hospital. Lunch was great. After emailing for the past couple of months it was great to finally meet up, get to know each other and talk about the future of the relationships between the two universities and Roosevelt. Two students and a professor, Sr. Savaria, are coming to Roosevelt Thursday morning to meet with Dr. Mejia to formally get introduced to the hospital to start this program. This is all I could have ever dreamed of and am so excited to see things getting accomplished. UVG’s involvement at Roosevelt will be absolutely invaluable and key to ensuring our work is sustainable.   

WUGI and the UVG mechatronics assocation

      

The meeting with the UVG students left us all ready to get some research done before meeting  up with two professional engineers that I had met last summer. Hector Bonilla and Mario Valdeavellano both reached out to me once seeing I had returned to Guatemala. I am so grateful for their thoughtfulness and generosity and we ended the day on a high note after spending a couple hours catching up with them.

We also just found out one of the residents, Jose was diagnosed with dengue fever today. Please keep him in your thoughts!