A week in the theatre

Hello friends and family, Steph and Cierra here!

It's hard to believe another week is coming to an end and that we are more than halfway through our Zambian adventure. For us, this week was spent mostly in the OR, which is referred to here as the theatre. This is an area of particular interest for Steph, so we were looking forward to the learning that this experience would bring. 

The theatre turned out to be just as interesting as we had anticipated. We were amazed by the variety of surgeries we were able to see, from general to orthopaedic to gynaecological. We also noticed that the surgeons were from several different countries. Although there are probably language barriers and variances in techniques and approaches, the staff seemed to work very well together. It is inspiring to see people from all different backgrounds coming together for the common purpose of providing the best possible medical care with the resources available.

Another area that we were interested in seeing was the post anesthetic recovery room as we had heard that our fellow UBCO nursing colleagues from last year had helped to organize and create educational posters for this area. We learned that unfortunately there are rarely enough staff on in the theatre to have someone dedicated to monitoring patients post-surgery, meaning that patients often return to the surgical ward almost right away after their procedure. We wondered how this may impact the rate of recovery and the potential for post-surgical complications such as hemorrhage or adverse reactions to the anesthetic. Complications such as those could be especially difficult to manage as we know that the nurses on the surgical wards often have large patient loads and may not always be able to watch each patient as closely as they would like. 

We are thankful for the experiences we have been able to have so far in the beautiful city of Mongu and we look forward to the rest of our journey!

Until next time,

Cierra and Steph

Cierra's own mother could hardly tell us apart in this one.. No pressure to Steph's mom.