Deliveries, Dinner and Dancing

Last night Cook Medical (a biotech company that has developed a plug that is being used here, in Mbarara, for the first time to repair fistulas) invited the entire OB/GYN department of Mbarara University Hospital and the visiting UCLA team, out for a night of dinner and dancing to celebrate the success of the fistula camp. Kari and I sat at a table with a lively group of nurses (sisters) and had a great time socializing in a non-work environment. I always feel like you get to see an entirely different side of people when the uniform comes off (and the beer and wine comes out). At the end of dinner, someone turned the music up, and the entire staff hit the dance floor...we even had a congo line going at one point!

On a more professional note, Kari and I have been splitting our time between learning to deliver babies with the Ugandan midwives and working on a project to improve neonatal resuscitation outcomes. We started by holding an inservice in NRP with the nurses (complete with samosas and chipatti as bribary for attending...just like American product reps who scour the UCLA halls with bags of candy to lure us into listening to insturctions on how to use a new $15 product that holds a foley bag to a patient's leg...seems completley ridiculous now, that we would spend money on a fancy gaget when tape has never failed to work...I'm sure the nurses here would be more than happy to have an endless supply of tape, or as they call it, "strapping"). After talking with the nurses about their concerns and wishes to improve the resuscitations, we learned that the primary barrier to succes (that they could identify) is a lack of available support/help during a resuscitation. Since there seem to be at least 4 0r 5 medical students in the delivery ward at most times, we decided to try and train the medical students in NRP as well. After a weekend off (tracking gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable Forrest...amazing! the subject for an entire post of its own), we taught a two hour NRP class for the medical students, complete with mock code scenarios. Today we are back on the delivery ward, learning delivery skills from those same nurses and medical students.

More later from Mbarara!

Lisa