where's the gurney?

Its a bird, its a plane, no, its a helicopter! Behind the hospital swooping down faster and closer to residential housing than should be aloud, a chopper came for some very serious medical something or other. I was on my way to another day of medical rounds this morning and couldn't wait to find out what and who is the cause of this ruckus.

I'm not going to tell you the end of the story just yet, I'm going to make you sit through another boring blog first... some incentive to read through what I have to say. So stay tuned.

The Lautoka hospital is a large building that sits on a hill across the street from the Botanical Garden. It almost looks like a hotel from a far, until you get close enough to see the smoke stack jutting out from the boiler room (which acts as a crematorium and general waste management- most things are burned- its Fiji) thats housed 30 ft from the main building. A very simple and symmetrical building, it consists of 5 levels with two wards facing each other on each floor. Its seemingly well equipped for hospital in a developing country.

Medical rounds are really fun. I've joined a team with two last year medical students, an intern, one registrar, and a consultant - that order is the basic medical hierarchy here in Fiji, with nurses answering to anyone prefaced with the two letters D and R. No specialties in our group, just general medicine (internal medicine). Basically we spend four hours (without tea breaks, do you believe that... no tea breaks! Dont they know this is Fiji?) walking through four different wards- mens, womens, ICU, and private ward (aka the pay ward- basically a place where people pay for their own rooms).

The medical students- Hilda from Kiribati and Monasa, hes Fijian- watch and answer questions when asked as the registrar writes what the consultant- Dr. Baravilala- has to say about a given patient. Its much more informal than it sounds. Me, well I'm there for show, as in I stand there, look pretty, nod and smile, and laugh on cue. Really though, I just observe and listen and viciously write down new words that I later have to look up (medicine is truly like learning a language- and I would say, anyone with an aptitude for languages should seriously consider going into medicine). A lot of times I have to hold my tongue, but sometimes I get really excited and ask away. I tell myself that I'm doing them a favor by testing their knowledge for their final exam in December.

Anyway, after rounds I head down to the library (which is so nicely placed next to the staff dining hall), look up my new words and brush up on my general biology, physiology and anatomy. After about an hour I head next door for some chow. Its good chow too, not normal hospital food- we get curry and roti and fresh fruit and dhal, mmm.

Today was pretty slow, which might be surprising from my description of my walk to work. But, turned out that the chopper wasted $3,000 of the governments money to go pick up an asthmatic man from a near by island. I found out that what I had seen was a doctor pickup. When the chopper flew back, we all pressed our faces against the window to see who had been so loudly med-evaced. The patient was fine, no gurney, no sling, nothing... he was walking! Thats all it takes, a nervous call and choppers will fly and pick you up. In fact, maybe next weekend I'll call in from one of the islands... you know, I've never been on a chopper before.

If nothing else it gave me a good, but uneasy, laugh. I kind of asked about regulations and issues concerning severity for a med-evac and the consultant said there wasnt really a system in place. In fact, he said that when he was in Suva there would be fake calls like that from the Lau group if the boats werent running properly for an extended period of time. I dont know what to say about all that except that it was a waste of money. It's really unfortunate because this man got fast care when the queue is out the door for people who are still waiting and may have traveled even farther than he did.

Okay, its almost 4:30pm and I'm off to go witness my first natural birth. yikes.