[HSF] Sympathy anyone.......

[David Harris]

Bob, I`ve just spent 2 weeks doing general surgery at
an American  mission hospital in Togo, West Africa.
Those guys prove you wrong....one man does all, and
those guys are good medical practitioners AND general
surgeons AND technicians, AND spiritual /
compassionate practitioners.

Its amazing how they can plan the majority of major
surgery there with minimal lab tests, a portable x ray
machine, and they do their own sonars. No icu or
ventilators, but 2 fully equipped OR`s. A fully
stocked library so the surgeon can read up outside his
speciality before he does the unusual case. The
turnover is high, and the patients do well and length
of stay is short.
They even make their own iv fluid (4 varieties),
re-using glass plasmalyte bottles, and oxygen is made
locally.

Most anaesthetics are done with Ketalar or spinals.
More complex cases are kept for visiting specialist 
anesthesiologists who do short term trips (usually
with surgical specialists). An ortho team was there at
the same time, but the long term docs manage all the
ortho trauma as well.

It was an interesting experience...There is scope to
do cardiac sessions there.

Dave
--- Rwmfglycar at aol.com wrote:

> Ani,
> Your long and detailed answer to my comment
> describes how imperfect our  
> system is. Your front line doctor is dealing in
> reasonable guesses, your  
> cardiologist does not need a medical degree to do
> his specialised task, andall  
> imperfection  is forgiven.
> We could run the system by having a large staff of
> ubermensche seeing every  
> patient at first contact and coming up with a
> differential diagnosis with  
> various consequent treatment and dealing with the
> patient long enough to be sure  
> he /she goes down the optimal path. Subsequent
> attention would be  provided 
> by highly trained non medical technicians to do the 
> tests, remove the gall 
> bladder , place the stents etc, with other 
> specialist non doctors providing 
> comforting words and so on.
> When I finished medical school I said to myself the
> most good I could do  
> with my degree would be to be the best possible
> general practioner (archaic  
> term) but on reflection I decided I could never
> learn enough to reach that  goal 
> and so I went into surgery.
> Bob
> 
> 
> 
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Dr. David G. Harris, FCS, MMED,
Cardiothoracic Surgeon        
Suite 207                                
Kuils River Private Hospital,        
PO Box 1200, Kuils River, 7579, Cape Town, South Africa.            
Tel +27-21-9006411             
Fax +27-21-9006412      Mobile +27-83-3309587