Day 6: Moving Right Along

It is crazy to think that it’s already Friday and our first week at Roosevelt has come and gone. We spent the morning in Gastro working on the remaining broken equipment there. It’s amazing that in only 3-4 days we have made a significant impact on their equipment. Today we fixed another monitor, tested outlets, worked on a blood pressure monitor that is more than 50 years old and potentially repaired the last broken monitor they have, we will find out on Monday if it’s functioning after it’s new batteries recharge. 

Before we fixed the monitor Imani's heart beat was a little spastic...

Working in gastro has been extremely rewarding for a number of reasons: we have successfully fixed 2 endoscopy towers, 2 monitors (potentially 3), we work along side a wonderful staff of nurses who have always been welcoming and informative while working along side us, we have been told countless times, particularly after a repair, that we are a “blessing” and that we are saving the hospital and patients thousands of dollars and directly impacting the state of the unit. We have promised them filters for their respirators, a new bp cuff and pump and a pulse oximeter we have brought with us. 

The WUGI team with the wonderful gastro nurses.

They definitely have a great sense of humor that's made gastro (of all things) fun.

We spent the second part of our day touring the infant ICU that actually has large plastic crates full of broken equipment. The infant ICU and maternity wards are extremely crowded—there is hardly room to stand. It is clear that any help we can provide them will be appreciated.

Outside the entrance of the maternity ward.

Inside the infant ICU.

They decorated for mother's day in the marternity ward.

We left Roosevelt a little early to get ready for our weekend of truly being tourists. We are headed to Panajachel, a beautiful town on Lake Atitlan. More to come on our trip, breathtaking pictures guaranteed!

Day 5: Success

Today was all around a fabulous day. It was beautiful outside, we were successful in our repairs and met with our friend, Andres, for dinner. We started our day at Roosevelt, instead of heading straight to gastro to continue our work on the endoscopes, we had a meeting with Dr. Mejia, the director of Internal Medicine, and toured the women’s ward which was nicely decorated with mother’s day banners. The nurses there brought us a broken ECG and a broken SpO2 sensor. 

We discovered that the ECG was missing a number of important parts including a paper role, pin, and battery. We asked a nurse whether she could locate a paper role and the pin, but apparently the pin has been lost making the thermal printer of the ECG unusable. It was also particularly interesting to see that the battery was simply missing from the machine. A general consensus from the staff was that the battery had to have been stolen and sold on the market. However, as this model of ECG is no longer manufactured we are having a lot of trouble even locating a replacement battery. Unfortunately the ECG battery was not an unique case, the SpO2 sensor was also missing a battery. It had also clearly been opened up before and put back together ad-hoc. It led us to many questions about how this equipment has been treated and who has damaged it in the past. For now, there is unfortunately nothing we can do except look to order more parts for these machines.

What we found where we expected to find the battery of the SpO2 sensor

We then returned back to gastro, determined to make headway. We are happy to report that by the end of the day we fully repaired two endoscopes!!! It was incredibly rewarding to see just how grateful the nurses and doctors were for our help and the machines are immediately being  put to use for procedures tomorrow.  Each endoscope we repaired saved the hospital about $4,500, money they truly do not have to spend.

We fixed it! Don't worry, Mark was happier than he looks

We left the hospital with more spirit than we’ve had the entire trip. We were feeling useful, needed, appreciated and finally confident in our abilities. We spent of the day completing research until we met up with Jorge Andres Bonilla, a friend from last summer who took us all out to dinner and drinks. It was great seeing Andres again and great to hear how successful he’s been since he finished his residency at Roosevelt. After a great night of catching up we’re all tired and ready for our last work day of the week.

Thanks for a great night, Andres!