Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Days in the hospital

It is my turn, Hannah,  to share a little bit about my experience here in Chogoria. Many of you reading the blog may not know me but I am a Radiology Tech major. I also loving anything that involves kids. All last week I was working in the schools with the kids and teachers which was so much fun but not in my field at all. Yesterday and today I got the opportunity to work at the Chogoria Hospital in the Radiology department. It has been a very interesting and eye opening experience!

I had no idea what to expect when approaching the department after getting to know the area of Chogoria over the last week. How to even begin to explain I'm not sure but I'll try my best. The deputy of the hospital lead me to the department. When we walked in, the Radiology Tech had no idea I was coming that day (typical with the communication between departments). The room was quite small. It had one X-ray machine that was not movable, except for moving it horizontally and vertically. For a machine that does not move, it was not in a good location in the room because it was very hard to move around. As for the machine itself  the arm would slide up and down for positioning. It had a pointer for aligning the patient where they need to be and we would have to adjust the table or cassette to be in the correct position.

The controls and "office" were in the same small room, tucked in the corner. The exposure controls was a small box next to a big generator box. Like controls back home, you pick what kind of X-ray you are doing then adjust the degree of exposure you need according to the type of patient. The machine here is very old so the older the patient the higher they put the numbers for exposure. When I was shadowing at Jamestown Hospital they had recently updated to the most updated machines so it was a few simple clicks of a mouse and the image was up on the computer screen. That was not the case here! To take the picture you had to hold the prep button for about 5 seconds and then press exposure and hold them both for about another 5 seconds. As I have mentioned, it is a very old machine! They still you cassette's with film in them to take the X-ray. As soon as they take the X-ray they go right to the dark room and develop it. It's like a photo printer, it's pretty cool! You put it in the tray and let is process through 4 cycles to develop and harden the film and about 5 minutes later you have the developed X-ray.

The machine that interested me the most was the ECG machine. I was used to seeing ECG's done on an ultrasoundd machine but here they had a seperate machine and a very old one at that! It reminded me of the game "Operation". The control box looked like a projector without the lens. The patient was hooked up to four different color clamps, two on their ankles and two on their wrists. The cables were then hooked up to their respective colors and then the cables that hook up to the chest looked like mini balloon horns that clowns carry and were suctioned to their right chest. The recording of the ECG printed out on reciept size paper with  many different readings on it. Out of all the machines I encountered, this one was the most different but so fun to see!

Today I got to spend most of my day with the Sonographer, Jeremiah, who studied in the US for four years. Ultrasound is the area of Radiology I am most intersted in so it was fun to spend most of my day in that area. Again the sonography machine was very outdated but it functions just fine. A difference between the US and here is they dont get to save images while they are doing an ultrasound they just have to print them and they come out of the machine like a kodak pciture out of a polaroid picture and then at the end they get a stream of pictures like a photo booth. Another difference is that they handwrite medical results immediately after the ultrasound to give them back to the patient.

As for a few differences besides the machines that really stuck out to me. First of all, the prices of the X-ray's! They were so inexpensive. A chest X-Ray was 1,000 shillings so about $12.50. An ECG was about 1,500 shillings which is about $20, just for a few examples! I was shocked, but to them that is expensive. They had to pay the fees before they could have any X-ray taken.  Another shocker was they do not use robes at all. To say the least, when the first person was a girl getting a chest X-ray and I walked out of the office I was a little surprised as to what I saw. As the day went on I realized that was norm and that was the way things worked here. When a X-ray was being taken we would lock the door with a skeleton key, but other than that people just walked in an out as they pleased even with a patient in the room. The biggest shock to me was the patients were handed the results right after the test and it was their responsibility to take the results to their doctor.

I have four favorite experiences over the last few days: taking a hand X-ray on my own, developing/processing X-rays for 2 hours and reading them, holding a 7 month old baby boy for about a half hour, and watching OB/GYN ultrasounds. Overall it was a great experience for me to spend two days in the hospital. Sometimes I wish I could be in two places at once. I'm very excited to get back to the kids and teach standard 2 tomorrow but I would also love a few more days at the hospital. Hopefully I can get a few pictures up on the blog so everyone can see what I am talking about with the machines I worked with the last few days!

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